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TIME  IN  ENGLISH  VERSE  RHYTHM 

AN  EMPIRICAL,  STUDY  OF  TYPICAL 
VERSES  BY  THE  GRAPHIC  METHOD 


WARNER  BROWN,  A.M. 


Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfilment  of  the  Requirements  for  the 

Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  in  the  Faculty  of 

Philosophy,  Columbia  University 


Reprinted  from  the  Archives  of  Psychology,  No.  10 


NEW  YORK 

THE   SCIENCE   PRESS 
1908 


TIME  IN  ENGLISH  YERSE  RHYTHM 

AN  EMPIRICAL  STUDY  OF  TYPICAL 
VERSES  BY  THE  GRAPHIC  METHOD 


BY 

WARNER  BROWN,  A.M. 


Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfilment  of  the  Requirements  for  the 

Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  in  the  Faculty  of 

Philosophy,  Columbia  University 


Reprinted  from  the  Archives  of  Psychology,  No.  10 


NEW  YOKK 

THE   SCIENCE   PRESS 

19O8 


PRESS  or 

THE  NEW  ERA  PRINTINS  COMPAQ 
LANCASTER,  PA. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

INTRODUCTION    I 

CHAP.        I.    METHODS  OF  STUDYING  VERSE  RHYTHM  5 

a.  Simple  Observation  by  Ear   5 

6.  Phonographic   Repetition    7 

c.  Tapping  7 

d.  Reaction  Methods   9 

e.  Determination  of  Subjective  Rhythms    10 

f.  Experimental  Method    1 1 

CHAP.      II.     GRAPHIC  METHOD  AND  MECHANICAL  AIDS   14 

CHAP.    III.     PITCH,  INTENSITY  AND  DURATION   21 

CHAP.     IV.     TIME  RELATIONS.    THEORIES  OF  THE  METRISTS  AND  POETS  . .  26 

CHAP.       V.     TIME  RELATIONS  AS  TREATED  BY  THE  EXPERIMENTALISTS  ...  34 

CHAP.     VI.     EXPERIMENTAL  RESULTS  38 

a.  Procedure    38 

5.  Duration  of  Feet    42. 

c.  Ratio  of  Accented  to  Unaccented  Syllables 52 

d.  Rising  and  Falling  Rhythms   55 

e.  Two-Syllable  and  Three- Syllable  Rhythms   58 

f.  Regularity  of  Feet  and  Syllables   64 

CHAP.   VII.     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  RESULTS  FOR  METRICAL  THEORY  70 

CHAP.  VIII.    SIGNIFICANCE  OF  RESULTS  FOR  THEORY  OF  RHYTHM  74 


183493 


TIME   IN    ENGLISH   VERSE  RHYTHM 


This  study  treats  of  the  time  relations  found  in  English  verse 
rhythm.  It  states  the  defects  of  the  current  methods  of  studying 
the  subject  and  the  advantages  of  psychological  experimentation  by 
the  aid  of  graphic  records  of  the  voice.  Selected  examples  of  Eng- 
lish verse  are  then  examined  and  the  various  theories  of  metrists 
and  psychologists  on  the  subject  criticized  in  the  light  of  the  ex- 
perimental results. 

INTRODUCTION 

No  one  will  contradict  the  statement  that  all  verse  is  character- 
ized by  rhythm.  About  poetry  there  may  be  some  dispute;  at 
any  rate  highly  poetic  prose  may  not  be  particularly  rhythmical  and 
may  at  the  same  time  be  better  poetry  than  some  very  regular 
verse.  Every  theory  of  rhythm,  no  matter  what  its  other  peculiari- 
ties, must  be  sufficiently  broad  to  include  verse.  Music  and  verse 
are  the  sources  of  most  of  our  more  affective  experiences  of  rhythm. 
Not  that  there  are  not  many  other  rhythmical  experiences  in  our 
daily  life,  indeed  the  ordinary  functions  of  our  organic  existence 
are  constantly  supplying  a  stream  of  sensations  which  are  at  once 
recognized  as  rhythmical  when  attention  is  paid  to  them.  But  it  is 
through  our  ears  that  we  are  best  able  to  enjoy  perceiving  rhythms 
and  with  the  voice  that  we  produce  them  oftenest  and  with  the 
greatest  satisfaction.  The  ordinary  organic  rhythms  go  on  un- 
perceived  for  the  most  part,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  such 
semi- voluntary  movements  as  walking  or  riding  a  bicycle.  Even 
heard  rhythms  are  frequently  ignored,  it  is  true,  but  music  and 
still  more  verse  receive  a  high  degree  of  attention.  And  even  if  we 
learn  to  disregard  music  under  certain  circumstances,  when  we  are 
occupied  in  conversation  or  otherwise  preoccupied,  the  sound  of 
recited  verse  retains  its  power  to  compel  our  attention. 

This  is  perhaps  due  to  the  infrequency  with  which  recited  verse 
is  heard  under  modern  conditions;  the  ancients  perhaps  paid  as 
little  attention  to  the  public  reciter  as  the  modern  gourmet  pays  to 
the  orchestra  while  he  dines.  However  this  may  be  with  regard  to 
passive  appreciation,  it  is  certain  that  the  act  of  producing  or  repro- 
ducing music  or  verse— still  better  good  music  or  poetry— is  keenly 
enjoyed  by  most  people. 


2  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

The  mere  admission,  however,  that  all  verse  is  rhythmical  tells 
very  little  about  the  nature  of  rhythm  itself  and  still  less  about 
verse.  It  is  here  that  all  the  confusion  arises,  for  without  an 
adequate  determination  of  one  or  the  other  term  no  advance  can  be 
made.  If  rhythm  could  be  defined  once  for  all  it  would  be  feasible 
to  apply  this  definition  to  verse.  On  the  other  hand  if  verse  were 
once  fully  analyzed  a  definition  of  rhythm  could  be  indirectly 
derived  with  some  degree  of  assurance. 

In  view  of  the  difficulty  of  defining  rhythm  independently  the 
other  course  seems  the  more  hopeful.  The  task  appears  simple,  and 
once  accomplished  there  could  be  no  more  of  the  "inaccuracy,  con- 
fusion, misconception,  misrepresentation,  mystification,  and  down- 
right ignorance"  of  which  Poe  complains  so  bitterly  in  that  essay 
of  his  which  is  still  the  most  penetrating  analysis  we  have  of  English 
verse.1  Yet  simple  as  the  task  seems  it  has  not  been  accomplished 
and  indeed  has  scarcely  been  broached  by  a  long  line  of  students 
both  metrists  and  psychologists.2 

That  the  net  result  of  all  the  careful  attention  devoted  to  the 
subject  of  verse  rhythm  has  been  so  inconclusive  is  due  in  great 
measure  to  one  fundamental  mistake  in  method— a  mistake  which 
has  not  been  recognized  till  recently,  and  which  is  being  corrected 
only  slowly.  This  mistake  lies  in  treating  rhythm  objectively  as 
an  art  form  rather  than  as  a  form  of  motor  expression.  By  this  I 
do  not  mean  to  express  a  prejudice  against  all  but  the  so-called 
"motor  theories"  of  rhythm.  And  indeed  I  would  by  no  means 
slight  the  study  of  rhythmic  forms  as  they  are  perceived.  But  I 
do  maintain  that  the  study  of  verse  forms  would  have  gotten  along 
much  faster,  if  we  had  paid  more  attention  to  the  actual  performance 
of  an  individual  in  producing  spoken  verse,  and  less  to  the  im- 
pression made  upon  a  listener.  After  all  it  is  the  nature  of  the 
rhythmic  action  which  counts. 

So  long  as  the  listener  receives  a  rhythmic  impression  it  is 
enough.  Beyond  that  his  analysis  is  at  best  unscientific  and  at 
worst  positively  misleading.  He  is  open  to  all  sorts  of  peculiar 
illusions  arising  from  the  nature  of  the  material  in  hand.  It  is 
a  well  known  fact  that  the  estimation  of  intervals  of  time  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  under  the  best  of  circumstances.  It  is  peculiarly 

1  Poe,  E.  A.,  "  The  Rationale  of  Verse." 

2  For  a  bibliography  of  metrists  see  Gayley  and  Scott,  "  An  Introduction 
to  the  Methods  and  Materials  of  Literary  Criticism,"  Chap.  7,   1899;  Omond, 
T.    S.,   "English   Metrists,"    1903.     For   psychologists   see   Wallin,   J.    E.    W., 
Studies  from  the  Yale  Psychol.  Laboratory,  9,  1901 ;   Stetson,  R.  H.,  Psychol. 
Rev.  Mon.  Sup.,  Vol.   IV.,  p.  413,   1903;   Triplett  and  Sanford,  Am.  Jour,  of 
Psych.,  12,  1901;  Miner,  J.  B.,  Psychol.  Rev.  Mon.  Sup.,  No.  21,  1903;  Minor, 
J.,  "  Neuhochdeutsch  Metrik,"  1894. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

hard  to  equate  intervals  filled  with  different  sensational  content- 
lights  and  sounds,  or  sounds  of  different  intensity  or  quality.  But 
in  verse  or  poetry  the  conditions  are  still  more  difficult,  for  not  only 
are  the  intervals  to  be  compared  filled  with  a  content  which  is 
constantly  changing  in  sensational  quality— the  endless  variety  of 
sounds  which  make  up  the  words  and  phrases— but  it  is  also  dis- 
turbed by  the  intellectual  and  emotional  content.  Verse  can  not 
be  heard  as  a  mere  succession  of  sounds  making  up  a  rhythm.  It 
also  conveys  ideas  and  has  meaning.  And  the  meaning  of  it  can 
not  fail  to  interfere  with  any  attempt  to  form  an  estimate  of  the 
duration  or  intensity  of  the  mere  sounds. 

A  comparison  of  the  various  ideas  which  various  individuals 
have  held  will  suffice  to  justify  this  indictment  of  conclusions 
reached  by  the  unaided  ear  in  the  analysis  of  the  sounds  of  verse. 
And  even  the  most  superficial  study  of  the  verses  which  I  have 
analyzed  will  convince  anyone  that  the  time  values  of  words  in  our 
verse  are  far  different  from  what  he  himself  would  be  led  by  his 
ear  to  expect.  Illusions  due  to  the  variety  of  sensational  quality  of 
the  sounds  themselves  and  graver  illusions  arising  from  the  fact 
that  verse  must  have  meaning  to  be  verse  at  all  can  only  be  avoided 
by  putting  a  mechanism  in  place  of  the  impressionable  listener  to 
analyze  the  sounds.  Such  mechanisms1  are  available.  They  are 
designed  to  present  in  the  form  of  a  curve  or  otherwise  the  actual 
sounds  produced  in  speaking.  Such  a  record  is  of  course  one- 
sided in  that  it  deliberately  excludes  all  the  sense  content  of  speech. 

But  such  a  one-sided  treatment  is  what  scientific  procedure 
demands.  To  study  a  phenomenon  in  its  entirety  may  occasionally 
yield  good  results  but  as  a  rule  analysis  must  proceed  first  by 
exclusion.  The  problem  must  be  made  specific  before  it  can  fairly 
be  attacked.  Speech  or  verse  rhythms  in  their  true  character 
present  a  multiplicity  of  difficulties  like  the  proverbial  bundle  of 
arrows.  To  reduce  them  all  at  once  is  a  task  far  beyond  the  power 
of  the  present  writer;  this  enquiry,  therefore,  is  concerned  only 
with  the  sounds  which  reach  the  ear  as  one  listens  to  verse  which 
is  spoken.  No  account  can  be  taken,  then,  of  all  the  wealth  of 
feeling  and  idea  which  such  sounds  express  and  convey.  No  matter 
how  much  we  may  regret  such  a  forcible  divorce  of  the  sense  from 
the  matter  no  other  course  is  open.  Doubtless  such  a  separation 
may  seem  to  some  readers  useless  as  well  as  arbitrary.  And  so  far 
as  the  arts  of  versification  and  poetry  are  concerned  it  is  useless. 
Poets  will  continue  to  write  good  or  bad  verse  according  to  their 
gifts  as  heretofore;  no  formulae  can  tell  them  how  to  practise 
their  art  nor  even  serve  as  criteria  of  success  or  failure  for  them. 

But  for  the  psychologist  such  an  arbitrary  analysis  as  I  propose 


4  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

is  by  no  means  useless.  Rhythm  is  one  of  the  commonest  psy- 
chological phenomena.  Hardly  an  act  is  performed  by  us  either 
mentally  or  physically  into  which  rhythm  does  not  enter  as  one  of 
the  obvious  factors.  Yet  we  know  little  of  the  nature  of  rhythm. 
In  fact  we  can  scarcely  define  it  coherently.  There  seems  to  be 
about  it  an  element  of  regularity  and  a  recurrence  in  time;  but 
wherein  the  regularity  consists  we  can  not  definitely  say  nor  can 
we  specify  what  the  conditions  are  under  which  recurrence  in 
time  takes  on  the  additional  characteristics  of  a  rhythm.  In  verse. 
however,  we  have  rhythm  exemplified— about  this  there  can  be  no 
doubt— and  there  is  every  indication  that  an  analysis  of  verse  will 
reveal  certain  of  the  essential  characteristics  of  all  rhythm.  And 
even  if  such  positive  characteristics  do  not  appear  the  analysis  will 
serve  to  exclude  from  further  consideration  certain  features  gen- 
erally attributed  to  rhythmic  phenomena  but  which  are  not  found 
in  the  actual  analysis.  For  in  this  case  as  in  many  others  negative 
results  are  of  positive  value.  The  beginning  of  definition  is  in 
elimination  and  there  are  abundant  indications  that  the  definition 
of  rhythm  will  profit  by  eliminating  some  of  the  qualifications — 
particularly  in  regard  to  regularity  of  recurrence— which  have 
attached  themselves  to  it. 

The  fact  that  careful  analysis  of  verse— admittedly  one  of  the 
earliest  and  commonest  forms  of  rhythmic  expression— does  not 
reveal  certain  features  claimed  to  be  essential  to  rhythm  will  prove 
that  they  are  not  essential.  It  is  thus  that  the  psychologist  is 
justified  in  mutilating  good  verse  in  order,  not  so  much  to  find  out 
how  it  is  made,  but  to  get  rid  of  false  notions  about  its  rhythmic 
structure  and  about  the  necessary  conditions  of  rhythm  in  general. 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  verse  rhythm  does  not  reside  in  the 
sound  of  the  words  of  the  verse,  but  in  their  logical  and  emotional 
content.  If  this  were  so  no  justification  could  be  found  for  analyz- 
ing the  sounds  apart  from  their  sense.  But  common  observation 
gives  the  lie  to  such  an  assumption.  Verse  in  an  unknown  tongue 
is  abundantly  rhythmical— sometimes  more  so  than  the  verse  we 
can  understand,  so  we  are  even  led  occasionally  to  the  false  infer- 
ence that  foreigners  chant  or  sing-song  their  verse.  Moreover  some 
of  our  own  verse,  nursery  rimes  as  well  as  some  very  ornate  poetry, 
is  practically  devoid  of  meaning,  but  maintains  a  strong  rhythm. 
Many  other  considerations  might  be  brought  forward  to  substantiate 
the  impression  that  the  mere  sounds  in  verse  are  rhythmical.  But 
the  fact  is  too  obvious. 

The  psychologist  is  justified  in  undertaking  an  analysis  of  spoken 
verse  rhythms  with  the  reasonable  expectation  of  obtaining  from  it 
information  about  the  nature  of  rhythm  in  general. 


CHAPTER    I 

METHODS  OP  STUDYING  VERSE  RHYTHM 
(a)  Simple  Observation  ~by  Ear 

The  most  natural  way  to  study  speech  sounds  is  to  listen  at- 
tentively. For  that  no  apparatus  is  needed  and  no  experimental 
technique  required.  The  method  is  still  simpler  if  one  listen  to 
one's  own  voice,  for  then  the  ear  is  aided  by  the  various  sensations 
and  feelings  which  arise  in  consequence  of  exercising  the  vocal 
organs.1  But  self-observation  even  when  quite  satisfactory  to  the 
individual  is  not  to  be  trusted  scientifically  and  can  not  be  accepted 
when  any  other  method  is  at  hand.  Direct  observation  of  other 
persons'  performances  is,  however,  involved  in  this  case  with  many 
of  the  same  difficulties  of  prejudice  and  preoccupied  attention  which 
beset  self-observation.  It  is  hard  to  form  a  judgment  about  what 
we  hear  spoken,  wholly  on  the  basis  of  what  we  hear.  The  observer 
is  very  apt  to  be  confused  by  what  he  would  himself  say,  or  even 
by  what  he  has  said  or  is  at  the  very  time  saying  under  his  breath 
as  he  listens  to  a  rhythmic  utterance. 

The  scientific  objections  to  what  is  here  called  the  observational 
as  contrasted  with  the  experimental  method  can  be  divided  into 
psychological  and  mathematical.  These  objections  apply  to  the 
qualitative  and  quantitative  aspects  of  the  results  respectively. 
Qualitatively  the  psychologist  should  look  with  suspicion  on  pro- 
fessed facts  of  observation  which  can  not  be  rehearsed,  that  is,  re- 
peated at  will.  Such  an  observation  is  valid,  in  general,  only  in  so 
far  as  it  asserts  that  there  was  a  phenomenon.  Analysis  and  quali- 
tative determination  of  the  phenomenon  should  not  be  attempted 
unless  the  phenomenon  can  be  recalled  and  the  analysis  verified. 
Taking  our  own  subject— verse  rhythm— as  an  example,  the  reality 
of  this  difficulty  is  beyond  doubt.  Let  us  suppose  that  I  sit  listen- 
ing to  the  recitation  of  Kingsley's  " Three  Fishers."  When  the 

1  That  the  sensations  from  the  speech  organs  themselves  are  not,  however, 
alone  sufficient  to  give  a  clear  impression  of  rhythm  can  be  discovered  by  any 
one  who  will  try  to  sing  or  recite  verse  in  the  presence  of  a  great  roar  of 
sound  or  better  still  when  there  is  a  strong  quick  echo.  Under  such  circum- 
stances it  is  extremely  difficult  to  maintain  regular  speech  rhythms.  When, 
however,  the  ear  is  functioning  normally  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  sensations 
attending  the  utterance  of  the  sounds  are  of  great  importance  in,  the  total 
rhythmic  effect. 

5 


6  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

recitation  is  done  I  make  the  following  memoranda:  (1)  The  effect 
was  rhythmical  and  pleasing.  (2)  The  rhythm  was  anapaestic,  i.  e., 
11  rising. "  (3)1  feel  that  rhythmic  effect  is  based  upon  the  rather 
regular  recurrence  of  strong  accents  or  beats  followed  by  unaccented 
syllables.  (4)  I  find  the  rhythm  somewhat  broken. 

Now  so  far  as  observation  (1)  is  concerned  there  can  be  no  dif- 
ficulty. That  is  the  statement  of  the  presence  of  a  phenomenon. 
But  the  other  observations  are  attempts  to  analyze  the  situation, 
and,  while  they  have  a  certain  value,  the  psychologist  knows  that 
they  are  subject  to  contradiction  both  by  other  observers  and  by 
the  same  observer  under  slightly  different  circumstances.  Thus  if 
I  listen  to  the  same  person  reading  the  same  verses  another  day, 
(the  reading  being  as  nearly  as  possible  the  same  as  before),  I  may 
very  likely  say  the  meter  is  dactylic,  very  regular,  and  based  on 
groups  of  sounds  of  about  equal  time  value. 

Such  contradictory  statements  arise,  of  course,  out  of  the  fact 
that  observers  are  subject  to  a  vast  complex  of  emotional  states  and 
intellectual  prejudices  which  make  their  uncontrolled  observations 
extremely  unreliable.  Thus  I  hear  the  rhythm  as  dactylic  when 
the  verse  affects  me  so  as  to  stimulate  me;  I  hear  it  as  anapa3stic 
when  it  depresses  me.  I  notice  and  emphasize  the  stress  or  time 
factors  according  to  my  interest  or  prejudice  in  favor  of  one  or 
another  theory  of  versification.  The  rhythm  is  smooth  or  rough  to 
me  according  to  the  degree,  perhaps,  in  which  I  enter  into  the  swing 
of  the  verse  and  make  it  my  own;  or  perhaps  the  roughness  is  only 
the  result  of  poor  muscle  tonus  which  prevents  a  good  motor  re- 
sponse. In  any  case  such  observations  are  not  to  be  depended  on 
because  we  have  no  assurance  that  they  can  ever  be  got  again. 

In  so  far  as  unaided  observation  pretends  to  arrive  at  quantita- 
tive results  its  pretensions  must  fail  because  of  lack  of  measurement. 
Scientific  observations  are  valid  quantitatively  only  so  far  as  the 
accuracy  of  the  measurement  can  be  determined.  My  mere  observa- 
tion of  the  length  of  time  a  word  takes  in  utterance  or  of  the  rela- 
tive durations  of  the  syllables  composing  the  word  gives  no  measure 
that  can  be  relied  upon. 

So  far  then  as  rhythm  in  verse  depends  upon  quantitative 
factors  (time  and  stress),  uncontrolled  observation  gives  no  real 
means  of  determining  those  factors.  Such  a  method  must  ulti- 
mately give  way  to  one  offering  conditions  of  experimental  control. 
Meanwhile  it  is  often  the  only  method  at  hand,  and  weak  or  fallaci- 
ous as  its  determinations  of  fact  often  are  it  is  not  to  be  despised 
utterly.  Mere  observation  and  emotional  reaction  is  the  favorite 
procedure  of  the  poet,  and  the  study  of  verse  is  so  close  to  poetry 


METHODS  OF  STUDYING  VERSE  RHYTHM  7 

that  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  this  simple  method  persisting  long 
after  more  exact  methods  have  made  their  appearance. 

(b)  Phonographic  Repetition 

An  advance  is  made  beyond  uncontrolled  observations  like  those 
of  Sweet2  or  Lanier3  by  using  the  phonograph  record  as  repeated  by 
the  machine.4  I  am  not  sure  that  the  increased  accessibility  of  the 
record  (due  to  the  fact  that  it  can  be  repeated  at  will)  any  more 
than  compensates  for  the  inevitable  distortion  of  the  mechanical  re- 
production. In  this  respect  there  is  no  evident  advantage  over  a  fre- 
quent repetition  of  the  same  verses  by  the  reciter.  The  process  of 
reducing  the  speed  of  the  repeated  record,  while  it  affords  time 
for  more  accurate  reactions,  can  not  make  the  analysis  any  more 
reliable. 

This  method  is  open  to  the  same  objection  that  must  be  made 
to  mere  listening  observation  in  any  form.  The  disposition  and 
rhythmical  tendencies  of  the  listener  are  not  measurable  and  too 
much  trust  is  put  in  the  testimony  of  the  ear.  Even  if  more  than 
one  listener  records  results,  though  this  excludes  individual  distor- 
tions, it  can  not  give  anything  like  an  objectively  valid  measure- 
ment of  the  sounds  uttered.  The  main  fact  so  often  observed  and 
carefully  examined  that  we  construct  rhythms  in  series  which  are 
objectively  uniform  and  that  our  estimates  of  intensity  and  of  time 
duration  are  beset  with  illusions,  ought  to  make  us  mistrust  all 
observations  where  such  possibilities  of  illusion  enter  in. 

(c)  Tapping 

There  is  another  method  of  recording  speech  stress  which  is 
closely  allied  to  the  graphic  method  in  technique  but  psychologically 
quite  unrelated  to  it.  It  may  be  called  the  semi-graphic,  or  better, 
the  tapping  method.  It  permits  of  the  use  of  a  drum  and  time 
record  and  gives  a  permanent  and  indisputable  account  of  certain 
movements.  In  this  respect  it  is  better  than  bare  listening.  But  it 
does  not  record  speech  rhythms. 

Taps  or  other  voluntary  muscular  movements  which  are  sup- 
posed to  fall  upon  the  arsis  of  a  verse  foot  or  upon  any  designated 
accent  are  marked  on  the  drum  by  direct  lever,  by  pneumatic  trans- 
mission, or  by  electric  connection.5  It  may  be  true  as  Briicke6  claims 

3  Sweet,  H.,  "  History  of  English  Sounds,"  1888. 
3 Lanier,  S.,  "The  Science  of  English  Verse,"  1880. 

*Wallin,  Yale  Studies,  9,  1904;  Scripture,  E.  W.,  "Elements  of  Experi- 
mental Phonetics,"  1902. 

5  Either  a  signal  magnet  or  the  well-known  "  spark  method  "  may  be  used. 
•"Die  physiologische  Grundlagen  der  neuhochdeutschen  Verkunst,"   1871. 


8  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

that  such  a  movement  is  coordinate  with  the  vocal  stress  and  not 
subordinate  to  it.  But  his  attempt  at  finding  a  constant  error  which 
might  be  eliminated  was  doomed  to  failure  as  has  been  abundantly 
shown  by  subsequent  experiments  in  which  this  method  was  com- 
bined with  the  graphic  under  the  most  favorable  conditions. 
Miyake7  found  that  the  spark  set  off  by  a  tap  movement  might  be 
located  at  widely  different  points  in  the  voice  curve  under  different 
conditions.  Experiments  of  my  own  both  by  the  spark  method  and 
with  a  pneumatic  device  for  recording  the  taps  show  the  same 
irregularities.  No  constant  error  was  observable,  the  taps  preced- 
ing or  following  the  syllable  with  which  they  belonged.  This  is  to 
be  expected  with  motor  functions  so  little  connected  as  those  of 
speech  and  hand  movements. 

In  part  the  disparity  found  between  a  tapped  and  a  voice 
record  is  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  we  are  in  the  habit  of 
tapping  out  rhythms  with  the  hand  or  by  nodding  the  head,  etc., 
without  regard  to  other  rhythmic  impressions.  Most  people  have 
such  motor  rhythm  habits  well  developed,  as  is  abundantly  testified 
to  by  the  common  observation  of  people  as  they  ''drum  with  their 
fingers"  abstractedly.  Such  a  habit  being  well  established  it  be- 
comes difficult  to  institute  a  controlled  rhythmic  movement  of  the 
same  muscles,  for  they  tend  to  relapse  into  the  habitual  movement, 
The  tapping  rhythm  under  such  circumstances  is  likely  to  go  on 
without  respect  to  the  voice  rhythm.  At  any  rate  it  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  it  will  adequately  represent  the  latter. 

On  the  other  hand  the  claim  is  justly  made8  that  the  tapped 
rhythm,  which  is  remarkably  regular  and  probably  very  nearly 
automatic,  exercises  a  considerable  control  over  vocal  expression. 
The  tapping  thus  becomes  an  objective  control  like  an  instrumental 
accompaniment  and  the  proper  voice  rhythm  is  made  unduly  regular 
in  obedience  to  this  control,  thereby  losing  its  peculiar  character- 
istics. Whether  it  is  possible  for  a  practised  experimenter  to  avoid 
this  difficulty  by  careful  attention  need  not  be  discussed  here.  There 
is  certainly  no  way  of  determining  whether  the  internal  coordina- 
tion is  regular  in  the  first  place,  and  still  less  is  there  any  objective 
measure  of  the  control  exercised  over  the  voice  rhythm  by  the 
tapping  movements. 

When  the  object,  however,  is  to  examine  the  mechanical  scansion 
of  verses9  the  tapping  method  can  not  be  objected  to  since  extreme 

7  Miyake,  Studies  from  the  Yale  Psycliol.  Laboratory,  10,  1902. 

8  Wallin,  op.  cit. 

•Hurst  and  McKay,  University  of  Toronto  Studies.  Psycliol.  Series,  1, 
1900. 


METHODS  OF  STUDYING  VERSE  RHYTHM  9 

regularity  is  a  desideratum  in  mechanical  scansion  and  beat- 
ing time  contributes  directly  to  this  end.  I  must  confess,  however, 
that  I  fail  to  see  what  is  to  be  gained  for  the  study  of  verse  by  an 
examination  of  strictly  scanned  rhythms.  They  do  not  represent 
any  normal  rhythmical  phenomenon  of  speech.  On  the  other  hand 
they  do  not  have  the  characteristics  of  freely  tapped  rhythms. 

The  latter  are  highly  significant  in  the  study  of  rhythms  and 
nothing  which  has  been  said  above  is  intended  as  derogatory  of  the 
study  of  them.10  Such  pure  motor  rhythms,  devoid  as  they  are  of 
ideatonal  content,  come  nearer  perhaps  than  any  other  one  set  of 
phenomena  to  giving  a  reliable  instance  of  pure  rhythm.11  A 
rhythm,  however,  which  is  produced  by  a  set  of  movements  not 
directly  concerned  in  the  production  of  speech  sounds  has  cor- 
respondingly no  direct  connection  with  the  rhythm  of  those  sounds. 
The  two  things  are  irrelevant  to  each  other.  And  desirable  as  it 
is  to  know  all  about  the  different  forms  of  rhythmical  expression, 
those  of  the  hand  as  well  as  those  of  the  voice,  nothing  can  be 
gained  and  all  is  risked  by  assuming  that  the  one  can  be  substituted 
for  the  other. 

(d)  Reaction  Methods 

Taps  may  be  made  by  an  observer  in  response  to  accents  which 
he  hears  in  a  series  of  sounds.  When  such  a  procedure  is  adopted 
all  the  previous  difficulties  are  complicated  by  the  addition  of  those 
peculiar  to  the  reaction  time  experiment.  The  most  serious  ob- 
jection to  the  application  of  the  reaction  method  in  the  case  of  a 
series  of  rhythmical  sounds  is  that  expectation  enters  in  an  extreme 
degree;  and  there  is  no  way  of  discovering  whether  the  observer  is 
really  reacting  to  what  accents  he  hears  or  merely  recording  the 
beat  of  a  rhythmical  series  of  his  own.12 

When  the  sounds  vary  considerably  in  intensity  and  energy  as 
they  do  in  speech  there  is  no  way  of  ascertaining  the  effect  of  those 
variations  upon  the  reaction  time.  The  expectation  is  that  the 
reaction  time  will  be  shorter  for  the  more  intense  sounds13  but  no 
very  close  correction  can  be  made  with  the  data  at  hand  in  such  an 
experiment.  The  occurrence  of  the  sounds  being  quite  irregular 
and  each  preceding  sound  serving  as  a  signal  for  the  succeeding 

"McDougall,  R.,  Psychol.  Rev.  Hon.  Sup.,  Vol.  IV. 

11  Compare  Meumann's  discussion  of  the  effect  of  content  or  meaning  upon 
rhythms,  Philos.  Studien,  10,  393,  1894. 

13  Compare,  for  instance,  the  anticipatory  reactions  in  the  ordinary  "  com- 
plication experiment." 

13Froeberg,  "The  Relation  of  the  Magnitude  of  Stimulus  to  the  Time  of 
Reaction,"  these  Archives,  No.  8,  1907. 


10  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

one  complicates  the  situation  very  seriously  and  inevitably  leads  to 
great  variability  in  the  reaction  times. 

In  point  of  fact  this  method  when  applied  to  actual  verses  is 
only  a  better  form  of  the  method  of  observation  with  which  this  kind 
of  study  began.  In  that  it  supplies  an  accurate  measure  of  the 
variability  of  the  observations  it  has  certain  advantages.14  But 
what  it  gains  in  mathematical  accuracy  it  loses  in  psychological 
reliability  through  the  interference  of  the  observer's  own  rhythmical 
tendencies  as  an  indeterminate  factor.15 

(e)  Determination  of  Subjective  Rhythms 

If,  however,  the  object  of  an  experimenter  is  to  ascertain  these 
very  rhythmical  tendencies  of  his  subject  he  is  abundantly  justified 
in  the  use  of  a  reaction  method.16  It  should  be  understood,  however, 
at  the  outset  that  the  determination  of  the  subjective  tendencies  of 
a  subject  to  rhythmize  certain  auditory  or  other  sensations  has  little 
or  nothing  to  do  with  a  determination  of  that  subject's  rhythmic 
utterances  or  movements.  This  point  has  been  too  often  lost  sight 
of. 

Psychologically  it  makes  all  the  difference  whether  I  hear  the 
supposedly  similar  ticks  of  a  clock  and  group  them  into  some  such 
rhythmical  order  as  tick-tock,  tick-took,  or  whether  on  the  other 
hand,  I  amuse  myself  by  repeating  the  words  tick,  tock  in  a  rhyth- 
mical series.  In  the  one  case  there  is  a  very  complicated  perceptive 
or  affective  situation  (psychologists  differ  in  their  analysis  of  it) 
where  the  observer  groups  certain  discrete  impressions  into  fresh 
units  supplied  by  himself  while  he  is  all  the  while  subject  to  illu- 
sions of  time  and  accent  which  make  him  feel  that  the  ticks  he  hears 
are  unequal  in  force  and  separated  by  unequal  intervals  of  time. 
That  is  the  one  case;  perceptive  or  affective,  or  both,  and  difficult 
of  analysis. 

In  the  other  case  I  simply  make  certain  movements  which  some 
one  else  or  I  myself  call  rhythmical.  In  this  case  all  we  need  to 
do  is  to  measure  those  movements.  We  do  not  have  to  enquire 
further  how  and  why  the  movements  give  rise  to  a  rhythmical  im- 
pression. It  is  sufficient  that  they  do  so.  To  refuse  to  recognize 
the  distinction  here  drawn  is  to  ignore  the  division  between  de- 

"McDougall,  Psychol.  Rev.  Hon.  Sup.,  Vol.  IV.,  393,  1903. 

"There  is  a  distinct  difference  between  this  method — where  the  sound  is 
heard  and  reacted  to — and  the  tapping  method,  where  two  movements  are 
coordinated. 

16Bolton,  T.  L.,  Amer.  Jour,  of  Psychol.,  6,  1893;  Miner,  Psychol.  Rev. 
Mon.  Sup.,  No.  21,  1903;  Ebhardt,  K.,  Ztschr.  f.  Psychol,  18,  1898;  Biicker, 
Abh.  d.  Sachs.  Ges.  d.  Wiss.,  17,  1896. 


METHODS  OF  STUDYING  VERSE  RHYTHM          H 

ductive  and  analytic  methods  and  those  of  induction.  Any  single 
analysis  of  a  verse  of  poetry  as  regards  its  rhythmic  constituents 
involves  a  working  definition  of  rhythm  in  general  and  of  verse 
rhythms  in  particular.  One  can  not  analyze  these  things  without 
knowing  what  to  look  for. 

The  inductive  procedure  on  the  contrary  is  perfectly  direct  and 
requires  no  presuppositions  whatever.  If  the  sounds  of  a  verse  are 
admitted  to  be  rhythmical  nothing  remains  but  the  comparatively 
simple  description  of  what  the  verse  is  made  of  acoustically.  Ad- 
mittedly no  inductive  procedure  ever  gives  final  results  and  no  one 
denies  the  necessity  of  an  analysis  and  generalization  from  the  as- 
certained facts.  Butffar  too  much  effort  has  been  wasted  on  vain 
attempts  to  analyze  verse  without  any  facts  at  all  or  with  the  most 
loose  and  inaccurate  observations.  Such  analyses  are  bound  to  fail, 
and  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  theory  of  versification  is  burdened  with 
a  mass  of  contradictory  and  ill-grounded  generalization.  For  the 
most  part  such  generalizations  rest  on  individual  observation  and 
more  or  less  chimerical  theories  of  the  nature  of  rhythm  and  time. 
The  accurate  records  of  concrete  instances  of  rhythmical  verses  are 
so  few  as  to  be  utterly  lost  in  the  verbiage  of  the  philologists  and 
metristsJ 

(/)   Experimental  Method 

The  method  of  the  experimental  psychologist  with  its  peculiar 
excellencies  also  has  its  own  defects  like  all  the  other  methods.  The 
psychologist  may  indeed  feel  envious  at  times  of  the  rapidity  and 
seeming  success  of  methods  more  systematic  and  theoretical  than  his. 
The  experimental  method  at  best  seems  to  be  all  too  slow  and  when 
one  must  carry  it  to  the  still  further  degree  of  considering  the 
human  elements  in  the  obscure  phenomena  the  restraint  becomes 
onerous.  None  the  less  the  demands  of  scientific  exactness  must 
be  met  sooner  or  later.  A  few  well  sifted  theories  may  endure  for 
a  long  time  but  all  at  last  will  be  brought  to  the  bar  of  human 
experience  and  made  to  give  an  account  of  themselves.  In  so  far 
as  the  method  of  psychology  is  first  of  all  that  of  determining  the 
characteristics  of  any  given  particular  human  experience  it  is  to 
psychology  and  psychologists  that  the  task  falls  of  examining  and 
criticizing  those  theories  which  pretend  to  formulate  any  given  set 
of  experiences  or  aspect  of  an  experience.17 

17  Experiments  which  have  to  do  with  the  esthetic  attitude  of  the  subject 
toward  a  rhythmical  series;  with  his  appreciation  of  rhythm;  his  ability  to 
discover  rhythm  in  a  regular  or  irregular  series;  or  with  his  reactions  to  sup- 
posedly rhythmical  situations  fall  without  the  scope  of  a  study  of  the  actual 
rhythmical  series.  Such  work  will  be  referred  to  in  these  pages  only  as  it  has 
suggested  and  led  up  to  more  strictly  empirical  methods. 


12  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

The  experience  of  rhythm  is  one  of  those  which  can  profitably 
be  made  the  subject  of  theoretical  and  schematic  discussion  up  to  a 
certain  point.  Beyond  that  point  nothing  can  take  the  place  of  a 
sober  consideration  of  the  facts  experienced  and  the  resulting  ex- 
perience. The  judgment  of  an  observer  is  final  upon  the  question 
of  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  a  rhythm,  just  as  it  is  final  on 
the  existence  of  any  other  phenomena  of  consciousness.  Whatever 
the  definition  of  rhythm,  the  occurrence  of  the  state  of  mind  can 
not  be  doubted.  Others  may  claim  that  there  are  rhythms  which 
go  on  unperceived  by  the  particular  observer  and  not  affecting 
him.  And  from  some  point  of  view  that  may  be  true.  But  the 
psychologist  is  only  concerned  with  a  rhythm  that  is  felt.  Here 
as  always  it  is  the  duty  of  the  psychologist  to  take  account  of  the 
positive  cases  irrespective  of  the  number  of  negative  cases.  The 
latter  may  be  made  use  of  under  particular  conditions  of  experi- 
mentation but  most  of  them  are  without  significance.  For  a  man 
who  has  had  one  vivid  hallucinatory  experience,  the  absence  of 
them  during  the  rest  of  his  life  is  irrelevant;  and  the  psychologist 
above  all,  is  concerned  with  the  particular  conditions  of  that  par- 
ticular experience.  When  difference  tones  are  heard  with  two 
notes  of  a  certain  interval  or  when  colored  after-images  are  present 
for  some  time  after  looking  at  a  bright  white  light  it  is  the  posi- 
tive phenomena  which  are  made  the  object  of  investigation.  It 
matters  very  little  that  some  individuals  can  never  hear  such  dif- 
ference tones  or  that  most  of  us  live  through  similar  conditions  with 
respect  to  bright  lights  a  hundred  times  without  being  conscious 
of  the  after-images  which  a  little  attention  could  make  vivid.  The 
psychologist  can  do  nothing  with  difference  tones  and  after-images 
that  are  not  heard  and  seen.  His  business  has  to  do  with  the  phe- 
nomena that  are  heard  and  seen.  The  judgment  of  an  observer  is 
the  one  indispensable  requisite  for  the  pursuit  of  the  psychological 
method. 

So  it  is  with  the  case  of  rhythm.  Its  presence  must  be  recog- 
nized before  it  has  psychological  existence.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
its  existence  can  not  be  denied  when  it  is  present  according  to  some 
one's  deliberate  judgment.  An  observer's  judgment  must  receive 
just  as  much  consideration  no  matter  how  divergent  it  may  be  from 
the  consensus  of  opinion  or  from  established  doctrine. 

In  questions  of  esthetic  appreciation  the  difference  is  most  strik- 
ing between  the  ordinary  unscientific  method  and  the  method  of 
psychology.  The  common  distinction  of  ' '  good ' '  and  ' '  bad ' '  taste  in 
matters  of  art  stands  in  direct  opposition  to  the  eminently  more  psy- 
chological dictum,  de  gustibus  non  disputandum.  The  conditions 


METHODS    OF   STUDYING    VERSE    RHYTHM  13 

under  which  esthetic  feelings  occur  can  be  defined  more  or  less 
accurately,  but  this  can  be  done  only  by  observing  actual  cases  of 
their  occurrence ;  never  by  laying  down  rules  about  what  ought  and 
what  ought  not  to  be  appreciated.  Such  rules  rest  on  a  considera- 
tion of  the  subject-matter.  The  only  valid  conclusions  rest  on  the 
description  of  phenomena  experienced. 

Rhythm  and  verse  are  so  closely  related  to  art  forms  that  their 
theory  has  been  exposed  to  much  the  same  abuses  as  the  theory  of 
the  corresponding  art  products.  When  poetry  is  defined  a  priori 
it  is  easy  to  go  on  to  a  definition  of  verse  in  the  same  way.  In  fact 
one  definition  demands  the  other  generally,  as  a  prop.  Verse  and 
verse  rhythm,  however,  can  not  be  defined  a  priori. 

Such  being  the  case,  the  psychologist  is  bound  to  seek  out  the 
actual  facts,  and  build  up  from  them  an  empirical  description  of 
the  phenomena.  Experimentation  is  the  method  which  the  scien- 
tifically minded  psychologist  adopts  to  secure  observations  as  free 
as  possible  from  error.  Fortunately  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to 
defend  experimentation  as  a  method  of  approaching  many  of  the 
questions  which  were  made  the  subject  of  uncontrolled  observation 
in  the  past.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  we  employ  experiments  be- 
cause only  by  so  doing  is  it  possible  to  secure  measurements  under 
conditions  permitting  of  repetition  at  will.  The  extension  of  this 
method  to  the  study  of  verse  is  justified,  therefore,  by  the  failure  of 
any  other  method  to  maintain  those  two  requisites  of  scientific 
exactness. 


CHAPTER   II 

GRAPHIC  METHOD  AND  MECHANICAL  AIDS 

ONCE  granted  that  there  is  profit  in  experimentally  analyzing 
verse  with  regard  to  its  sounds  apart  from  its  sense,  the  question 
arises  how  mechanical  means  can  be  adapted  to  the  purpose,  thereby 
eliminating  the  illusions  and  errors  of  observation  to  which  unaided 
human  ears  are  liable.  Attempts  to  record  the  voice  automatically 
in  such  a  way  that  the  record  can  be  subsequently  studied  at  leisure 
have  been  numberless.  Many  have  failed,  others  have  had  a  certain 
measure  of  success.  But  in  so  far  as  they  are  all  attempts  to  trans- 
late the  temporal  sound  series  into  a  visible  record  in  space  they 
fall  under  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  the  " graphic  method." 
The  name  ' '  graphic  method ' '  is  applied  to  two  very  different  things. 
So  far  as  it  refers  to  graphic  methods  of  presenting  quantitative 
facts  in  the  form  of  plots  and  various  kinds  of  graphs  it  does  not 
concern  us  at  the  moment.  More  strictly  the  term  is  applied  to  any 
kind  of  direct  registration  upon  paper  or  a  similar  surface  by  a 
stylus  or  pen.  The  facts  which  are  registered  in  this  way  include 
changes  of  temperature;  time  series;  the  velocity  and  force  of 
movement  both  of  bodies  and  muscles;  the  pressure  of  gases  and 
liquids;  wave  movements  in  various  media;  and  a  great  number  of 
physiological  cycles  such  as  respiration,  pulse,  etc.  Under  registra- 
tion of  waves  of  course  comes  sound  registration.  Another  very 
interesting  field  is  that  of  stroboscopic  photography.  Ordinary 
photography  would  not  be  classed  as  a  graphic  method,  but  it  is 
often  of  great  assistance  as  a  secondary  aid  in  the  application  of 
the  method  proper.  No  mere  record  of  a  static  fact  is  included  in 
the  scope  of  the  graphic  method.  It  applies  only  to  the  registra- 
tion of  changes  or  movements  of  some  kind. 

The  earliest  application  was  in  the  registration  of  meteorological 
data,  and  in  that  field  its  successful  employment  has  gradually 
spread  until  at  the  present  time  almost  all  scientific  measurements 
of  these  facts  are  made  automatically.  In  the  Weather  Bureau 
stations  for  instance  measurements  of  temperature,  barometric  pres- 
sure, wind  velocity  and  humidity  are  seldom  or  never  read  directly 
from  the  instruments.  In  fact  many  of  the  instruments  do  not 
permit  of  direct  reading.  Nevertheless  the  measurements  obtained 
are  even  more  accurate  than  the  most  careful  direct  reading.  One 
of  the  most  interesting  examples  of  this  type  of  graphic  record  is 

14 


GRAPHIC    METHOD   AND    MECHANICAL  AIDS  15 

the  seismograph  in  its  different  forms,  serving  to  record  the  ampli- 
tude and  directions  of  tremors  in  the  earth's  crust. 

The  graphic  method  was  applied  to  meteorology  before  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  particularly  in  the  form  of  curves 
for  temperature  and  wind  pressure  recorded  on  a  continuous  roll  of 
paper  (le  Marquis  d'Ous-en-Bray  1734),  or  on  smoked  paper 
(Rutherford  1774). 

Next  to  the  invention  of  the  method  itself  in  importance  stands 
the  control  of  it  by  the  introduction  of  a  time  record  on  the  same 
sheet.  When  the  revolution  of  the  clock  or  other  mechanism  com- 
monly used  is  perfectly  regular  the  time  can  be  read  off  from  the 
space  between  any  two  marks  of  the  pen  upon  the  paper;  but  it 
is  generally  safer  to  make  use  of  a  distinct  time  record  writing  a 
line  along  beside  the  others  which  are  being  made.  Without  such 
a  time  record  the  apparatus  is,  technically  speaking  "uncontrolled." 
For  this  indispensible  contribution  we  are  indebted  to  Thos.  Young 
who  employed  the  oscillations  of  a  simple  vibrating  reed.  Duhamel 
replaced  this  by  a  tuning  fork,  and  later  H!elmholtz,  Regnault  and 
Foucault  introduced  the  electrically  controlled  tuning  fork;  and 
finally  Marcel  Deprez  developed  the  "signal  magnet,"  which  has 
become  one  of  the  indispensable  accessories  of  the  modern  laboratory. 
James  Watt  used  the  graphic  method  to  record  steam  pressure  and 
its  employment  in  the  physical  sciences  has  steadily  extended  in 
scope.  The  Ludwig  kymograph  (not  the  drum  alone)  was  invented 
in  1847.  The  principle  was  applied  by  Volkmann,  Helmholtz, 
Vierordt,  and  others  in  Germany,  to  the  registration  of  the  heart 
beat,  respiration,  and  muscle  action.  In  1857  Vierordt  and  Tubin- 
gen announced  the  sphygmograph,  and  it  was  this  that  interested 
the  Frenchman,  Marey  in  the  possibilities  of  such  registration.  To 
him  we  owe  much  of  the  later  development  of  precise  methods  not 
only  in  application  to  physiological  problems  but  to  nearly  every 
field  of  experimental  investigation.  Thanks  to  his  ceaseless  devo- 
tion the  method  is  now  available  not  only  for  the  recording  and 
presenting  of  facts  in  a  compact  and  convincing  form  but  for  the 
recording  of  many  facts  too  minute  or  too  ephemeral  for  direct 
observation.  In  Marey 's  hands  a  registering  instrument  is  trans- 
formed into  an  instrument  of  precision,  an  indispensable  tool. 

In  no  one  field  has  the  graphic  method  afforded  such  diverse 
applications  as  in  the  recording  of  sound.  The  manometric  flame 
makes  it  possible  to  analyze  all  the  most  complex  compound  musical 
notes  and  on  the  other  hand  the  phonograph  makes  it  possible  to 
reproduce  sounds  of  all  sorts  with  extreme  accuracy.  The  one 
method  makes  possible  an  accurate  science  of  acoustics;  the  other 


16  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

not  only  seems  to  give  pleasure  to  great  numbers  of  people  but  is 
a  tremendous  aid  in  the  study  of  phonetics.  Neither  of  the  methods, 
however,  is  strictly  in  line  with  the  classical  form  of  the  graphic 
method.  Scripture1  and  others2  have  used  a  curve  taken  from  the 
recording  part  of  the  phonograph  and  have  studied  this  as  a  record 
of  the  sounds  which  can  be  reproduced  from  it.  Such  a  record 
whether  taken  on  a  revolving  disk  as  in  the  gramophone  or  cut  out 
from  the  wax  surface  of  a  cylinder  as  in  the  Edison  phonograph 
is  a  genuine  graphic  record.  Such  records  can  be  studied,  however, 
only  with  the  microscope  or  after  great  expense  of  time  in  enlarg- 
ing according  to  the  method  proposed  by  Scripture  and  to  some 
extent  carried  out  by  him.  Such  work  is  more  valuable  for  detail 
of  sounds  than  for  the  longer  stretches  of  connected  discourse. 

As  early  as  1$56  an  attempt  was  made  to  construct  a  recording 
device  for  speech  imitating  the  arrangement  of  the  ear.  This  is  the 
artificial  ear  or  phonautograph  of  Scott.3  Such  an  instrument  con- 
sists essentially  of  a  receiving  horn  and  a  diaphragm  of  some  sort 
which  actuates  a  lever  writing  on  some  surface.  Various  develop- 
ments along  this  line  are  chronicled  by  Scripture  in  his  "Elements 
of  Experimental  Phonetics."4  The  friction  of  the  lever  attach- 
ment can  be  got  rid  of  by  substituting  an  electrical  contact  as  in 
the  "voice  key"  of  Cattell5  and  Scripture.6  A  more  elaborate  form 
of  the  same  device  is  found  in  Rousselot  's  electric  recorder.7 

All  the  instruments  of  this  class  show  the  same  limitations  that 
were  spoken  of  in  the  case  of  the  manometric  flame  and  photo- 
graphic methods;  namely,  that  the  record  is  limited  to  only  com- 
paratively pure  sounds  or  notes.  The  more  complex  or  obscure 
sounds  are  not  at  all  adequately  represented.  Increased  perfec- 
tion of  the  mechanism  gives  more  and  more  detail  in  regard  to  the 
shape  and  amplitude  of  the  sound  waves,  but  the  piling  up  of  such 
an  amount  of  detail  soon  makes  it  quite  impossible  to  interpret  such 
records  with  profit.  The  phonograph  record  is  the  only  one  of  all 
the  devices  so  far  mentioned  which  is  adapted  to  record  long 
stretches  of  continuous  speech  and  the  interpretation  of  its  record 
as  Scripture  himself  admits8  is  such  a  problem  in  itself  that  there 

1 "  Elements  of  Experimental  Phonetics,"  also  Yale  Studies,  10,  1902. 

2  Marichelle,  "  La  parole  d'aprfcs  le  trace"  plionographique " ;   Lloyd,  Jour. 
Anat.  and  PhysioL,  31,  1897;  Marage,  L'Annfa  psychologique,  5,  1899. 

3  Inscription  automatique  des  sons  de  Pair  au  moyen  d'une  oreille  artificielle. 
*  See  also  Yale  Studies,  7,  1899. 

•Phil.  Studien,  3,  1886. 

8  Yale  Studies,  3,  1895. 

7  "  Principes  de  la  phone"tique  expe'rimentale,"  1902. 

8 "  Researches  in  Experimental  Phonetics,"  1906,  p.  4. 


GRAPHIC    METHOD   AND    MECHANICAL  AIDS  17 

is  little  hope  of  ever  accumulating  any  quantity  of  experimental 
data  in  regard  to  verse  in  this  way. 

The  disciples  of  Marey  and  particularly  the  investigators  under 
Rousselot  in  his  laboratory  of  the  College  de  France  have  come 
nearer  than  any  one  else  to  solving  the  difficulties  of  obtaining  a 
legible  record  of  speech  sounds.  Their  methods  include  the  record- 
ing of  lip  and  tongue  and  palate  movements  by  direct  levers  writing 
on  a  revolving  drum  or  by  electrical  keys  connecting  with  such 
levers.  More  adequate  are  the  various  devices  for  recording  the 
vibrations  arising  from  the  larynx,  either  by  a  pneumatic  bulb 
placed  against  the  throat  and  connecting  with  a  Marey  tambour 
writing  upon  a  drum,  or  by  a  device  placed  in  the  same  way  but 
equipped  with  a  mechanism  for  interrupting  an  electric  current.^. 
Most  successful  of  all,  however,  is  the  device  now  in  general  use  in 
slightly  different  forms  in  many  laboratories  by  which  the  breath 
as  well  as  the  sounds  of  the  speaker's  voice  are  conducted  directly 
to  a  tambour  and  there  recorded  on  the  drum. 

The  apparatus  which  I  have  used  for  the  analysis  of  verse  does 
not  differ  in  any  essential  from  that  described  independently  by 
Rousselot  and  Meyer.10  For  the  particular  purpose  of  noting 
rhythmic  time  values  less  delicate  records  are  required  than  for  the 
study  of  strictly  phonetic  questions.  Accordingly  the  apparatus  is 
made  as  simple  as  possible  and  the  rate  of  revolution  of  the  drum 
reduced  to  about  2  cm.  per  second  so  that  the  labor  of  measuring 
the  time  is  reduced  to  a  minimum;  the  error  of  measurement  is 
still  less  than  one  one-hundredth  second  for  each  syllable  measured. 

In  my  experiments  on  nonsense  syllables  the  time  line  was  given 
by  a  clock  beating  seconds;  the  records  were  then  measured  (under 
a  lens  of  course)  in  linear  units  and  the  proper  corrections  made  for 
the  speed  of  the  drum  during  any  given  second. 

In  the  later  experiments  with  actual  verse  a  vibrating  reed  was 
employed  to  interrupt  the  electric  current  through  a  time  marker 
every  tenth  of  a  second.  The  rate  of  the  reed  was  kept  constant  and 
frequently  tested  by  means  of  an  electric  counter  inserted  in  the 
circuit.  The  rate  of  the  reed  was  never  so  much  as  one  tenth 
second  fast  or  slow  per  minute;  that  is,  it  did  not  gain  or  lose  as 
much  as  one  count  in  six  hundred.  The  regularity  of  the  time  line 
thus  obtained  was  equal  as  nearly  as  could  be  measured  to  that  of 
a  100  vs.  Koenig  tuning  fork  writing  a  parallel  record.  » 

The  essential  part  of  the  apparatus  is  the  tambour.     It  should 

9  For  a  fuller  account  of  these  devices  see  Marey,  "  La  methode  graphique," 
1878,  p.  309;  Rousselot,  La  parole,  N.  S.,  1,  1,  401,  769,  1899. 
19  Die  neueren  Sprachen,  6,  123,  1899. 


18  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

be  as  small  and  light  as  possible  to  insure  the  greatest  liveliness  and 
responsiveness.  When  sufficient  vivacity  is  obtained  not  so  much 
attention  need  be  paid  to  the  accuracy  with  which  the  details  of 
wave  forms  are  recorded.  The  principal  result  to  be  arrived  at  is 
a  quick  response  to  the  first  breath  and  to  the  first  vowel  vibra- 
tion and  a  comparatively  quick  return  to  rest  when  the  breath  and 
sound  cease.  If  the  initial  and  final  points  of  a  sound  are  well 
defined  further  details  can  be  dispensed  with  so  far  as  the  rhythm 
is  concerned.  In  the  interest  of  lively  action  I  have  found  it  best 
to  use  a  very  small  capsule  for  the  tambour  (not  over  f-inch  in 
diameter  and  ^-inch  in  depth)  covered  by  a  rubber  membrane  of 
fairly  light  weight  pretty  well  stretched.  The  writing  lever  is  of 
split  bamboo  about  five  inches  long,  one  and  one  half  inches  being 
in  the  short  arm.  It  rests  in  a  delicate  cone  bearing,  and  is  at- 
tached firmly  by  sealing  wax  to  a  small  rest  (this  can  be  made  of 
paper)  gummed  to  the  rubber  membrane.  A  gelatine  writing  tip 
can  be  used  but  there  is  less  friction  if  the  bamboo  is  whittled  to  a 
very  fine  point  and  no  other  tip  added.  A  certain  loss  in  delicacy 
of  tracing  is  more  than  made  up  for  by  relieving  the  lever  of  any 
unnecessary  weight  and  at  the  same  time  increasing  the  smooth- 
ness of  the  tip. 

The  tube  for  admitting  the  air  to  the  tambour  can  as  well 
enter  at  the  side  as  the  base  of  the  drum,  and  when  particular 
attention  is  to  be  paid  to  vowel  vibrations  I  have  found  it  worth 
while  to  replace  the  solid  metal  base  of  the  drum  by  a  paper  or 
mica  diaphragm.  This  seems  to  act  as  a  resonator  opposite  the  rub- 
ber membrane  and  reinforces  the  vibrations  of  the  latter.  The 
vibrations  of  such  a  diaphragm  are  not,  however,  of  sufficient  ampli- 
tude to  make  an  independent  record. 

Unfortunately  our  knowledge  of  tambours  is  only  empirical  and 
of  several  which  appear  very  much  alike  perhaps  only  one  or  two 
will  give  good  records  of  sound  vibrations.  Fortunately,  however, 
tambours  of  various  sizes  and  proportions  can  be  constructed  and 
set  up  very  easily.  It  is  best  to  have  one  or  two  carefully  con- 
structed levers  with  a  fine  cone  bearing  arranged  on  a  sleeve  which 
can  be  slipped  onto  any  tambour  stem.  It  is  also  convenient  to  be 
able  to  slip  off  the  bearing  and  lever  when  replacing  the  rubber  mem- 
brane. The  latter  can  then  be  adjusted  without  fear  of  injuring  the 
delicate  lever  and  bearing.  A  fine  insulated  copper  wire  is  much 
more  convenient  than  the  usual  thread  for  fastening  the  membrane. 

The  tube  connecting  mouthpiece  and  tambour  should  be  as  short 
as  the  convenient  placing  of  the  speaker  will  permit.  A  few  inches 
more  or  less  does  not,  however,  interfere  appreciably  with  the  good 


GRAPHIC    METHOD    AND    MECHANICAL  AIDS  19 

action  of  the  recording  apparatus.  I  use  a  tube  of  rather  stiff 
rubber  about  two  feet  long  and  of  J-inch  bore. 

When  one  subject  is  to  serve  for  any  number  of  readings  it  is 
well  to  make  a  plaster  cast  of  the  lower  part  of  his  face,  hollow  it 
out  around  the  lips,  and  use  it  as  a  mouthpiece.  Such  a  mask 
requires  a  minimum  of  attention  from  the  reader  during  the  experi- 
ment. He  simply  holds  it  easily  against  his  face  with  his  left  hand. 
The  mask,  however,  is  by  no  means  necessary.  Precisely  the  same 
results  can  be  had  by  using  a  rubber  bell  of  about  three  inches 
diameter  such  as  can  be  obtained  in  various  sizes  in  hardware  stores 
for  the  use  of  plumbers.  The  only  difficulty  here  is  that  the  bell 
must  be  pressed  by  the  hand  into  the  right  shape  to  fit  the  face ;  most 
readers  require  a  little  practise  before  they  learn  to  handle  it  just 
right. 

This  apparatus  is  so  simple,  so  easy  to  construct  and  use  that 
one  is  surprised  that  it  has  not  come  into  more  general  use  in  the 
study  of  various  speech  curves.  It  is  as  accurate  as  is  desirable  for 
most  phonetic  points  and  its  operation  requires  no  elaborate  labora- 
tory equipment  nor  special  technique.  The  curves  themselves  are 
comparatively  easy  to  decipher  and  the  labor  involved  in  this  part 
of  the  work  though  great  is  far  less  than  that  of  deciphering 
phonograph  records.  Any  loss  in  accuracy  in  the  curve  as  compared 
with  that  of  the  phonograph  is  more  than  made  up  by  the  saving 
of  time  whereby  it  becomes  possible  to  multiply  the  number  of 
records  and  so  correct  the  error  of  any  one.  Moreover  it  is  very 
desirable  to  have  a  considerable  number  of  records  of  the  same  words 
for  purposes  of  comparison  and  the  detection  of  chance  variations 
in  the  enunciation.  No  other  apparatus  yields  so  many  records 
taken,  if  desirable,  at  one  sitting  and  under  the  same  conditions. 
The  interpretation  of  the  curves  is  as  stated  above  comparatively 
simple.  It  is,  of  course,  laborious  as  in  all  exact  measurement. 
Practise  is  required  in  deciphering  the  records  of  each  particular 
speaker,  for  each  one  has  his  characteristic  tricks  of  enunciation 
which  give  a  distinctive  form  to  the  curve.  Each  consonant  and 
consonant  group  has  a  peculiar  record  due  to  the  way  in  which  the 
breath  is  controlled  in  uttering  it.  Thus  p,  t,  d,  k,  show  a  sharp 
vertical  rise  of  the  lever  and  a  quick  recovery,  s  and  cli  a  gradual 
rise  and  irregular  fall.  The  more  distinctive  of  these  consonants 
serve  as  landmarks  in  the  record,  and  they  must  be  learned  for  each 
speaker.  The  records  can  be  read  off  roughly  with  the  naked  eye, 
but  for  the  finer  points  some  magnification  is  necessary.  A  watch 
maker's  lens  of  about  three  inches  focal  length  is  all  that  is  re- 
quired. 


20  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

Since  some  sounds  make  a  sharper  and  more  characteristic  curve 
than  others  it  is  desirable  to  choose  such  phrases  for  study  as  con- 
tain those  distinctive  sounds  at  the  critical  points  of  the  record. 
Selection  of  phrases  on  such  a  basis  does  not  prejudice  the  result  in 
any  way,  and  at  the  same  time  forestalls  any  question  about  the 
accuracy  of  the  curve  as  a  record  of  the  sounds.  When  there  is  any 
difficulty  about  interpreting  the  records  the  process  is  facilitated  by 
getting  the  reader  to  speak  the  separate  syllables  or  words  involved 
singly,  or  in  small  groups,  which  can  be  identified  at  once  and 
marked  in  the  record.  A  comparison  of  the  whole  record  with  these 
fragments  will  often  clear  up  obscure  points  in  the  former. 

No  doubt  this  simple  apparatus  is  capable  of  improvement,  but 
at  present  it  is  the  best  there  is  for  the  purpose  and  in  most  respects 
it  is  entirely  satisfactory. 


CHAPTER   III 

PITCH,  INTENSITY  AND  DURATION 

PHYSICALLY  considered  speech  sounds  are  characterized  by  in- 
tensity, duration  and  pitch  or  quality.  But  not  all  of  these  are  of 
equal  importance  for  verse.  The  present  enquiry  is  concerned  with 
one  of  these  factors  only,  that  of  duration.  The  others  can  not  be 
left  out  of  account  for  they  enter  intimately  into  the  time  relations 
of  every  rhythm;  but  the  method  as  well  as  the  purposes  which  I 
have  outlined  prevents  a  complete  consideration  of  anything  but  the 
time  relations.  /Ijraphic  experimentation  yields  but  poor  results  for 
instance,  in  the  case  of  pitch.  The  pitch  of  clear  vowels  when  sung 
can  be  measured,1  but  the  vowels  of  ordinary  speech  are  so  complex 
that  no  system  of  analysis  into  simple  components  is  adequate.}  In 
fact  the  work  of  Scripture2  seems  to  prove  beyond  question  that 
vowel  sounds  do  not  consist  of  a  fundamental  combined  with  resonat- 
ing partials  but  that  they  are  unstable  compounds  constantly  chang- 
ing in  wave  form.  If  this  is  so  the  task  of  measuring  them  is 
rendered  doubly  difficult.  Despite  Scripture's3  elaborate  arguments 
I  do  not  believe  that  we  can  trust  the  gramophone  curve  as  being 
more  accurate  than  the  reproduced  sound.  Just  the  opposite  may  be 
true.  But  the  phonograph  or  the  gramophone  record  is  the  most 
refined  graphic  record  we  have  at  the  present  time.  In  view  of  all 
this  we  are  compelled  to  neglect  for  the  present  the  pitch  and 
quality  aspects  of  speech  sounds.  Any  complete  account  of  speech 
rhythm  must  take  them  into  account.  They  are  perhaps  more  im- 
portant for  prose  rhythm  (if  there  is  such  a  thing)4  than  for 
verse. 

The  connection  between  intensity  and  duration  is  almost  as  hard 
to  discover  experimentally  but  it  occupies  such  a  large  place  in  the 
historical  theories  of  verse  rhythm  that  it  must  be  examined  more 
closely.  We  are  confronted  here  with  exceptional  difficulties,5  such 
that  present  day  physics,  phonetics  and  psychology  are  helpless 
before  them.  Linguistic  sounds  are  myriad,  each  differing  from 

1  Cameron,  Psychol.  Rev.  Hon.  Sup.,  No.  34,  1907. 
2 "  Researches  in  Experimental  Phonetics,"  p.  146. 
8  Ibid.,  p.  17. 

*  Lipsky,  "  Rhythm  as  a  Distinguishing  Characteristic  of  Prose  Style," 
these  Archives,  No.  4,  1907. 

6  Bourdon,  L'Annte  psychologique,  1897,  p.  372. 

21 


22  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

every  other  in  loudness  and  quality.  If  we  limit  ourselves  to  the 
English  language  alone  we  find  that  every  individual  who  uses  it  has 
his  own  private  way  of  modulating,  accentuating,  and  toning  it,  and 
so  characteristically  that  we  are  less  likely  to  confuse  two  human 
voices  than  we  are  two  human  faces. 

Now  it  is  possible  to  compare  the  physical  intensities  of  two 
sounds  of  the  same  wave-length  (pitch)  provided  they  have  the  same 
quality  (overtones  or  partials),  but  we  have  no  physical  measure- 
ment of  the  intensities  of  sound  differing  in  pitch  and  quality.  This 
being  the  situation,  how  hopeless  is  the  task  of  determining  the 
relative  intensity  of  sounds  which  differ  so  widely  in  quality  as,  for 
instance,  the  sounds  of  the  words  it  and  aim.  Moreover  in  speech 
we  have  practically  a  continuous  flow  of  sound,  and  the  determina- 
tion of  points  of  maximum  intensity  must  be  made  with  respect  to 
a  very  small  element  of  the  total  series,  not  with  respect  to  large 
masses  of  continuous  uniform  sound.  Even  if  we  had  a  means  of 
comparing  "it"  and  "aim"  taken  separately  and  as  units  little 
advance  would  have  been  made  toward  the  determination  of  the 
points  of  greatest  intensity  and  the  comparison  of  such  intensities 
when  found  in  a  sentence  like  "it  is  my  aim."  And  even  suppos- 
ing that  some  way  were  found  of  comparing  these  intensities  for  a 
given  speaker  at  a  given  time  there  is  no  way  of  applying  an  abso- 
lute standard  by  which  these  accents  could  be  compared  with  others. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  standard  of  intensity  of  sound. 

If  on  the  other  hand  we  abandon  the  attempt  to  obtain  objective 
spatial  measurements  of  the  accents  in  speech  and  fall  back  upon  our 
psychological  perception  of  their  presence  and  relative  magnitude 
new  difficulties  arise  to  confront  us.  Let  any  one  say  to  himself 
the  two  words  booty  and  hoot  and  try  to  discover  the  location  with 
any  exactness  of  the  greatest  stress  within  either  word.  Does  it  lie 
just  as  the  b  bursts  into  the  vowel  in  booty,  or  in  the  long  oo  sound 
in  either  case?  If  the  observation  is  made  while  some  one  else 
pronounces  the  words  the  results  will  probably  be  different.  This 
is  a  hard  thing  to  do.  It  is  still  harder  to  draw  a  curve  representing 
the  rise  and  fall  of  the  stress  up  to  and  down  from  the  point  of 
greatest  intensity. 

All  this  is  supposing  that  the  stress  is  one  of  loudness  only.  But 
there  is  small  probability  that  it  is  so.  More  likely  the  accented 
syllable  is  also  prolonged  in  time  and  altered  in  pitch.  In  that 
case  we  are  still  quite  well  able  to  tell  on  what  "syllable"  the  accent 
falls  but  further  than  that  our  ear  does  not  tell  much.6 

6  The  application  of  the  tapping  method  (McDougall)  offers  a  possible 
solution.  If  a  pneumatic  system  is  used  for  recording  the  taps  it  is  possible  to 


SPECIMENS  OF  THE  RECORDS. 


vp 

<^  CO] 


PITCH,  INTENSITY  AND  DURATION  23 

As  has  been  frequently  insisted  upon,  speech,  and  particularly 
rhythmical  speech  flows  almost  continuously.  Its  rhythm  is,  there- 
fore, more  like  that  of  a  singing  tea-kettle  or  humming  electric 
motor,  than  it  is  like  the  rhythm  of  a  metronome.  This  distinction 
can  not  be  too  much  emphasized.  The  investigation  of  rhythm  has 
been  confined  almost  exclusively  to  the  latter  type— the  type  made 
up  of  discrete  elements.  Perhaps  more  headway  would  have  been 
made  in  the  general  theory  if  the  type  which  arises  in  a  continuum 
had  received  more  attention.  A  word  of  caution  is  needed  against 
inferring  very  much  about  verse  rhythm,  which  is  of  this  continuous 
type,  from  experiments  in  tapping  and  listening  to  series  of  discrete 
sounds.  The  two  things  are  far  from  alike. 

The  reaction  method  of  study  is  found  in  its  least  objectionable 
form  when  the  reaction  is  made  to  a  qualitatively  distinct  member 
of  a  rhythmic  series  of  discrete  stimuli.  It  does  not  follow,  however, 
that  it  is  equally  applicable  in  the  case  of  a  continuous  flow  of 
sound.  Miyake7  found  that  the  stress  is  often  marked  by  a  tap 
before  the  beginning  of  a  sound.  I  have  found  the  same.  Briicke,8 
however,  found  that  the  taps  fell  within  or  near  the  end  of  an  initial 
vowel.  Meyer9  concludes  that  the  maximum  stress  falls,  with  the 
tap,  just  within  the  initial  consonant  sound  before  it  passes  into  the 
following  vowel.  He  assumes  perfect  coordination  of  tap  with  vocal 
stress.  These  contradictory  results  are  easily  understood  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  difficulty  we  feel  in  locating  our  own  stress,  but 
that  the  stress  should  precede  the  sound  is  absurd  from  the  point 
of  view  of  one  who  listens  to  the  sounds. 

The  graphic  method  can  give  little  help  on  this  point.  A  glance 
at  one  of  the  accompanying  records  will  serve  to  indicate  its  short- 
comings. The  vowel  sounds  are  indicated  by  a  low,  generally  flat, 
serrated  stretch ;  certain  of  the  more  explosive  consonants  by  a  sharp 
rise  and  a  more  or  less  gradual  fall  of  the  curve ;  the  nasals  by  nearly 
flat  stretches:  sibilants  and  aspirates  by  a  comparatively  slow  upward 
movement,  jit  may  be  possible  to  measure  roughly  the  intensity  of 
vowel  sounds  by  the  amplitude  of  the  vibrations  as  recorded.  Some 
consonants  would  be  measured  by  the  amount  of  breath  expelled; 
this  would  not  apply  to  all  of  the  consonants  however.  In  any  event 
no  comparison  is  possible  between  vowels  and  consonants  as  regards 

record  their  intensity  as  well  as  the  interval  of  time  between  them.  Neverthe- 
less it  is  a  long  jump  to  the  intensity  of  a  sound  or  speech  movement  from  the 
intensity  of  a  tap  coordinated  with  it. 

1  Studies  from  the  Yale  Psychol.  Laboratory,  10,  45,  1902. 

8  "Die  physiol.  Grundlage  der  neuhochdeutschen  Verskunst,"  p.  24. 

9  Die  neueren  Sprachen,  6,  122,  1899. 


24  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

stress  nor  between  different  vowels.  It  is  even  doubtful  whether 
the  same  consonants  can  be  compared  with  each  other  in  view  of  the 
different  form  of  the  breath  curve  under  varying  stress. 

On  the  whole  I  think  it  sensible  frankly  to  admit  the  impossibility 
of  any  exact  analysis  of  verse  with  respect  to  either  loudness  or 
intensity  in  the  more  psychologically  correct  connotation  which 
embraces  all  .the  factors  that  give  a  stressed  syllable  weight  or  im- 
pressiveness.1  We  can  determine  by  ear  roughly  the  syllable  stressed 
by  a  reader  and  I  have  simply  made  measurements  from  the  begin- 
ning of  one  such  syllable  to  the  beginning  of  the  next  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  stress  wherever  it  lies  is  not  far  from  the  beginning  of 
the  syllable.  That  this  assumption  is  not  scientific  can  not  be 
denied.  The  result  is  that  what  I  shall  have  to  say  about  the  posi- 
tion of  the  stress  will  necessarily  lack  such  precision  as  is  aimed  at  in 
the  case  of  the  measurement  of  the  durations  and  proportions  of 
syllables. 

The  graphic  method  is  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  determination 
of  time  intervals,  hence  its  applicability  to  the  measurement  of  the 
duration  of  speech  sounds.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  our  interest  is 
primarily  in  the  time  relations  of  the  verses  which  are  to  be  studied 
the  results  which  our  method  yields  in  this  respect  more  than  com- 
pensate for  its  inadequacy  in  recording  pitch  and  intensity. 

Scripture10  has  published  a  few  records  of  complete  verses  care- 
fully measured  off  from  enlarged  gramophone  records.  Such 
records  are  of  great  value  but  the  excessive  amount  of  time  and 
work  involved  in  obtaining  them  prohibits  their  employment  in  any 
great  number.  Stetson11  also  publishes  measurements  from  one 
entire  stanza  of  verse.  )  Meyer12  has  measured  all  the  English  vowel 
sounds  stressed  and  unstressed,  and  many  of  the  consonants  in  words 
of  different  lengths  and  in  different  positions,  initial,  medial  and 
terminal,  j  His  records  are  taken  with  a  modification  of  the  pneu- 
matic voice  recorder  of  Rousselot,  but  invented  by  himself.  The 
instrument  is  like  that  used  in  the  present  investigation  except  that 
the  breath  is  allowed  to  escape  through  a  gap  which  is  left  between 
two  sections  of  the  connecting  tube.13  The  records  obtained  are 
clear  and  the  time  values  given  for  the  different  letters  seem  to 

10  Yale  Studies,  10;  "Elements  of  Exp.  Phonetics";  "Researches  in  Experi- 
mental Phonetics." 

11  Psychol.  Rev.  Mon.  Sup.,  Vol.  IV. 

13  Skrifter  Kongl.  Humanistiska  Vetenskaps-Samfundet  Upsala,  8,  1903. 

13  The  advantage  of  allowing  free  egress  for  the  air  is  that  the  pen  recovers 
very  quickly  from  the  sharp  rise  due  to  an  explosive  consonant.  This  results 
in  a  more  jagged  curve  and  the  apparent  advantage  is,  in  my  opinion,  over- 
balanced by  the  loss  of  characteristic  slopes. 


PITCH,  INTENSITY  AND  DURATION  25 

be  accurate  to  at  least  one  one-hundredth  of  a  second.  Such  ac- 
curacy is  not  required  for  ordinary  rhythm  work. 

The  importance  of  having  actual  measurements  of  the  duration 
of  verse  sounds  will  be  realized  by  any  one  who  has  even  a  super- 
ficial acquaintance  with  the  long  arguments  of  the  metrists  on  the 
place  of  classical  or  quantitative  verse  in  English.  The  present 
investigation  was  undertaken  with  the  end  in  view  of  either  justify- 
ing one  or  the  other  of  the  prominent  views  of  theorists  on  this 
subject  or  else  of  dismissing  all  of  them  from  the  position  of  promi- 
nence which  they  now  occupy  in  the  discussion  of  verse  rhythm. 

Before  taking  up  the  actual  results  of  experiment  it  will  be  well 
to  review  some  of  the  more  important  theories  on  this  point  of 
the  importance  of  the  factor  of  duration. 


OF   THE 

{    UNIVERSITY   ) 

OF 


CHAPTER   IV 

TIME  RELATIONS  IN  THE  THEORIES  OF  THE  METRISTS  AND  POETS 

THIS  is  no  place  to  go  into  details  of  literary  disputes,  but  the 
opinions  of  some  of  the  best  writers  and  critics  of  verse  deserve 
notice  because  they  are  the  opinions  of  exceptional  observers;  and 
while  their  method  was  faulty  their  conclusions  are  often  deserving 
of  consideration. 

Verse,  says  Pee,  is  inferior  or  less  capable  music.  "  Verse  origi- 
nates in  the  human  enjoyment  of  equality,"  and  man  derives  enjoy- 
ment from  his  perception  of  equality.  A  hypothetical  history  of  the 
development  of  verse  would  begin  with  the  spondee,  "  words  of  two 
syllables  equally  accented."  This  becoming  monotonous  would  lead 
to  the  collection  ' '  of  two  or  more  words  formed  each  of  two  syllables 
differently  accented  (that  is  to  say,  short  and  long)  but  having  the 
same  order  in  each  word— in  other  terms  of  collecting  two  or  more 
iambuses  or  two  or  more  trochees.  And  here  let  me  pause  to  assert 
that  more  pitiable  nonsense  has  been  written  on  this  topic  of  long 
and  short  syllables  than  on  any  other  subject  under  the  sun.  In 
general  a  syllable  is  long  or  short,  just  as  it  is  easy  or  difficult  of 
enunciation.  The  natural  long  syllables  are  those  encumbered,  the 
natural  short  syllables  are  those  unencumbered,  with  consonants ;  all 
the  rest  is  mere  artificiality  and  jargon."  "Of  course  it  is  not  the 
vowel  that  is  long  but  the  syllable  of  which  the  vowel  is  a  part." 
"It  will  be  seen  that  the  length  of  a  syllable,  depending  on  the 
difficulty  or  facility  of  its  enunciation,  must  have  great  variety  in 
various  syllables;  but  for  purposes  of  verse  we  suppose  a  long 
syllable  equal  to  two  short  ones,  and  the  natural  deviations  from  this 
relativeness  we  correct  in  perusal.  The  more  closely  our  long 
syllables  approach  this  relation  with  our  short  ones  the  better, 
ceteris  paribus,  will  be  our  verse ;  but  if  the  relation  does  not  exist  of 
itself  we  force  it  by  emphasis,  which  can,  of  course  make  any 
syllable  as  long  as  desired;  or  by  an  effort  we  can  pronounce  with 
unnatural  brevity  a  syllable  that  is  not  too  long.  Accented  syllables 
are,  of  course,  always  long,  but  when  unencumbered  with  consonants 
must  be  classed  among  the  unnaturally  long."  "In  fine  every  long 
syllable  must  of  its  own  accord  occupy  in  its  utterance,  or  must  be 
made  to  occupy,  precisely  the  time  demanded  for  two  short  ones. 

26 


TIME  RELATIONS  IN  THEORIES  OF  METRISTS  AND  POETS        27 

The  only  exception  to  this  rule  is  found  in  the  caesura."1  A  very 
full  bibliography  of  the  "pitiable  nonsense"  to  which  our  great 
American  poet  refers  can  now  be  found  in  Omond's  "English 
Metrists."  Much  that  has  been  written  on  the  subject  is  certainly 
foolish;  yet  we  find  as  early  as  1776  that  Joshua  Steele  was  pro- 
posing2 the  scansion  of  verse  by  musical  feet.  Poe's  proposal 
amounts  practically  to  the  same  thing  except  that  he  limits  his  verse 
to  notes  of  only  two  lengths.  The  real  difference  between  this  and 
the  classical  notion  of  verse  is  important ;  for  the  Poe  theory,  which 
I  shall  hereafter  call  the  musical  theory,  starts  out  with  an  assump- 
tion of  equal  time  values  for  the  feet,  that  is,  for  the  rhythmic  units, 
in  the  verse.  The  theory  of  verse  descended  from  classical  times 
and  which  has  been  fighting  always  for  a  place  in  English  versifica- 
tion, did  not  go  beyond  a  statement  of  the  ratio  said  to  hold  between 
the  long  and  short  syllables  in  any  single  foot.  Both  the  classical 
theory  and  that  of  Poe  are  interesting  for  us  in  that  they  place  such 
great  stress  on  the  time  element  in  the  rhythm. 

Neither  Poe  nor  Lanier  whose  "Science  of  English  Verse"  con- 
tains the  ablest  and  most  satisfactory  exposition  of  the  music  theory 
of  verse,  says  what  he  would  measure  as  the  length  of  a  foot  or 
syllable.  But,  as  they  do  not  provide  for  any  vacant  spaces  between 
their  syllables,  I  presume  that  they  would  measure  as  I  have  done 
from  the  beginning  of  one  syllable  to  the  beginning  of  the  next. 
This  is  what  we  do  in  music,  but  in  that  case  there  is  no  gap.  As  a 
rule  the  flow  of  the  voice  is  practically  continuous.  In  fact  it  is 
often  difficult  to  tell  where  to  dismember  two  syllables  and  in  such 
cases  the  experimenter  has  to  rely  on  his  ear  as  the  court  of  last 
resort.  In  some  words  like  "porridge"  (Table  XIV.)  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  divide  the  syllables  and  I  have  had  to  measure  the  two 
syllables  together.3 

A  very  few  cases  of  actually  measured  verses  (see  tables)  are 
sufficient  to  show  the  artificiality  of  such  a  system  as  that  of  Lanier. 
So  far  as  the  equality  of  feet  and  the  equivalence  of  syllables  to 
musical  notes  is  concerned  his  theorizing  is  utterly  unwarranted. 
And  in  this  case  we  see  how  easy  it  is  for  a  serious  student  and  a 
good  poet  to  make  observations  about  time  values  which  bear  no 
faintest  resemblance  to  the  facts.  It  is  seldom  that  the  method  of 
mere  observation  and  of  introspection  can  be  so  plainly  convicted; 
yet  doubtless  many  of  our  ordinary  judgments  are  as  far  from  the 

1  All  from  the  first  few  pages  of  "  The  Rationale  of  Verse." 

2 "  Prosodia  Rationalis." 

3Cf.  Meyer,  Die  neueren  Sprachen,  6,  479,  1899. 


28  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

truth,  in  cases  where  there   is  no  way  of  securing   experimental 
evidence. 

One  of  the  more  recent  exponents  of  the  music  theory  is  Dabney.4 
Verse,  he  holds,  is  measured  by  accent  as  music  is  divided  into  feet 
of  equal  length.  "The  basic  principle  of  verse  is  time;  measure- 
ments of  time ;  uniform  measurements  of  time ;  which  measurements 
are  represented  by  words."  (p.  27).  Another  elaborate  treatise  is 
that  of  Raymond.5  Rhythm  in  verse  according  to  him  is  "an  effect 
produced  by  a  consecutive  series  of  sounds,  or  multiples  of  sounds, 
which,  in  themselves,  may  be  varied  and  complex;  but  each  series 
of  which  is  of  like  duration"  (p.  53). 

But  for  Raymond  as  well  as  Dabney  accent  is  fundamental  in 
marking  off  the  measures.  Even  so  their  introspection  is  no  better 
than  Lanier's  for  our  figures  come  very  far  off  from  the  equalities 
upon  which  they  insist. 

Some  question  may  arise  at  this  point  about  the  marking  on  the 
graphic  record  of  the  point  of  accent.  It  is  doubtful  whether  such 
writers  as  Raymond  mean  the  beginning  of  the  accented  syllable  as 
the  point  of  greatest  stress  of  voice.  As  has  been  said  already,  the 
latter  point  can  not  be  satisfactorily  determined.  On  the  whole  I 
have  decided  to  consider  only  the  beginning  of  the  syllables.  By 
doing  this  a  great  amount  of  work  is  avoided — work  not  only  labori- 
ous but  of  an  extremely  unreliable  sort.  There  are  certain  theories 
as  we  have  seen  which  require  measurements  from  the  beginning  of 
the  syllables;  if  other  measurements  must  be  made  from  some 
hypothetical  "Arsengipfel"  the  work  of  measuring  would  be 
doubled.  But  this  consideration  would  not  have  affected  me  had  it 
been  possible  to  find  any  such  Arsengipfel  or  top  point  of  stress. 
It  has  not  been  possible  to  do  so  and  I  am  convinced  that  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sound  is'  a  safer  place  to  measure  from  than  any  other 
one  point.  The  maximal  point  is  bound  to  lie  very  close  to  it  either 
before  or  after  and  the  amount  of  error  in  taking  this  point  is  small 
compared  with  the  amount  of  the  irregularity  of  total  feet. 

Other  exponents  of  the  equal  time  theory  are  Barham6  and 
Omond.7  The  latter 's  book  is  particularly  sane  as  regards  every- 
thing but  his  insistence  on  the  temporal  equality  of  all  units. 
Omond,  however,  does  not  insist  on  a  strict  equality  of  formal  feet 
(p.  80),  and  admits  that  a  syllable  may  be  on  the  border  line  between 

* "  The  Musical  Basis  of  Verse,"  1901. 

8 "  Rhythm  and  Harmony  in  Poetry  and  Music,"  1895. 

ePhilolog.  Soc.  Trans.,  1860-1,  part  1,  p.  45. 

1  "  A  Study  of  Metre,"  1903. 


TIME  RELATIONS  IN  THEORIES  OF  METRISTS  AND  POETS       29 

two  feet.  This,  however,  is  a  license,  and  only  for  the  sake  of 
variety. 

John  Ruskin8  asserts  that  "measured  times  of  utterance  are  the 
basis  of  verse"  but  also  that  "stress  accent  and  quality  are  the 
same";  and  Coventry  Patmore9  maintains  likewise  that  accents  are 
separated  by  isochronous  intervals. 

"Our  present  verse"  says  Sweet10  "is  based  mainly  on  the 
natural  stress  of  the  language,  each  strong  stress  marking  the  begin- 
ning of  a  foot  (bar).  But  the  stress-groups  of  ordinary  speech 
amount  to  nothing  more  than  prose :  to  make  these  stress  groups  into 
metrical  feet  it  is  necessary  to  have  them  of  equal  (or  proportionate) 
length,  and  in  English  verse  we  lengthen  or  shorten  syllables  without 
scruple  in  order  to  make  the  feet  Of  the  requisite  length."  In 
Schipper's11  monumental  work  a  place  is  made  for  measured  as  well 
as  accented  verse  in  English.  He  does  not  go  to  such  an  extreme  as 
Sweet,  however,  even  in  the  case  of  what  he  holds  to  be  measured 
rather  than  accentual  verse. 

Milton12  speaks  of  the  musical  delight  in  poetry  which  "consists 
only  in  apt  numbers,  fit  quantity  of  syllables,  and  the  sense  variously 
drawn  out  from  one  verse  into  another."  Chas.  Kingsley13  holds 
that  English  verse  is  not  regulated  by  accent  but  by  length  of 
syllable.  Gummere14  while  holding  (p.  144)  that  quantity  is  a 
secondary  factor  says  that  (p.  137)  "we  do  not  utterly  refuse  to 
recognize  it  as  an  element  of  verse,"  and  that  (p.  137)  "that  poetry 
which  depends  for  metrical  effect  on  detailed  time  relations 
(quantity)  will  come  nearer  to  music  than  the  poetry  which  depends 
chiefly  on  stress  relations  (intensity,  accent)."15 

In  discussing  those  authorities  who  maintain  that  time  relations 
are  the  fundamental  thing  in  English  verse  constant  reference  must 
be  made  to  others  who  place  the  emphasis  on  accent.  The  advocates 
of  this  other  position  are  rather  sharply  divided  into  two  classes, 
those  who  hold  that  accent  is  primary  but  that  the  time  relations 
of  the  accents  are  significant,  and  those  who  hold  that  accent  or 
accent  and  number  alone  form  the  unifying  principle  of  our  verse. 

The  latter  theory  is  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  grammarians 

8 "  Introduction  to  English  Prosody"   (cited  by  Gayley  and  Scott). 

9  Essay  appended  to  his  Poems. 

10 "  History  of  English  Sounds,"  1888,  p.  102. 

11 "  Grundriss  der  Englischen  Metrik,"  1895;   "  Englische  Metrik,"  1881-8. 

12  Preface  to  "  Paradise  Lost." 

13  "  Life  and  Letters,"  p.  347. 

""Handbook  of  Poetics  for  Students  of  English  Verse,"  1888. 
15  Cf.  Gayley  and  Scott  for  further  bibliography  along  this  line. 


30  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

and  of  the  common  people,  in  spite  of  the  insistence  on  time  propor- 
tions, which  we  have  seen,  by  an  intellectual  minority.  The  ordinary 
scansion  of  our  verse  rests  upon  regular  alternation  of  accented 
and  unaccented  syllables  or  of  "syllables  differing  in  quantity" 
(Gould  Brown).  The  emphasis  here  is  on  the  regularity  of  the 
alternation.  Most  of  us  have  had  painful  experience  of  this  sort  of 
scansion  and  no  further  description  is  desirable.  Much  of  our  best 
poetry  is  faultless  in  regard  to  such  regularity. 

On  the  other  hand  a  great  deal  of  verse  does  not  show  any  ap- 
preciable attempt  at  such  regularity.  It  is  said  that  Tennyson  read 
his  own  verse  very  musically  and  with  regard  to  quantity.  Such  a 
poet  would  be  inclined  to  disregard  alternation  of  syllables,  since  he 
had  another  principle  of  unity  upon  which  to  fall  back.  Pope's 
verse  is  ideal  for  alternating  accent  and  there  is  a  prophecy  of  the 
place  he  was  destined  to  occupy  in  future  discussion  in  his  depreca- 
tion of  too  much  music  in  verse  as  analogous  to  the  practise  of 
attending  church  for  the  sake  of  the  music.16 

The  commonplace  seldom  can  have  a  genius  for  its  advocate ;  the 
ordinary  scansion  is  therefore  left  without  any  very  articulate  de- 
fense. Poe's  caricature  of  it  will  serve  as  a  starting  point  in  order 
to  make  the  distinction  clear  between  his  own  position  and  that  of 
Gould  Brown  who  seems  to  have  been  selected  as  the  scape-goat  upon 
whom  to  cast  the  sins  of  all  grammarians.  Not  only  does  Poe 
"deny  the  necessity  of  any  regularity  in  the  succession  of  the  feet 
and  by  consequence  the  syllables,  but  disputes  the  essentiality  of 
any  alternation  regular  or  irregular  of  syllables  long  or  short." 
Compare  this  with  Sweet 's  dictum  that '  *  the  general  tendency  of  the 
language  is  to  alternate  strong  and  weak  stressed  syllables  as  much  as 
possible."  Sweet  (p.  31),  however,  agrees  with  Poe  that  mere  alter- 
nation does  not  give  rhythm  without  the  additional  element  of 
regularity  in  time.  But  he  considers  that  (p.  33)  "emphasis,  length, 
strong  stress,  and  high  pitch  are  naturally  though  not  necessarily 
associated. ' ' 

Ellis17  finds  some  forty-five  discernible  degrees  of  accent  or 
emphasis  springing  from  various  combinations  of  "force,  length, 
pitch,  weight  and  silence."  His  position  is  "that  English  verse, 
though  based  on  alternation  of  force  is  naturally  governed  by  length 
and  pause,  is  seldom  or  never  unaccompanied  by  variety  of  pitch 
unknown  in  prose  and  is  more  than  all  perhaps  governed  by 
weight."18  The  last  named  factor  relates  to  the  importance  of  the 

16 "  Essay  on  Criticism,"  1.  337  ff . 
17  PMlolog.  Soc.  Trans.,  1873. 
™Philolog.  Soc.  Trans.,  1876. 


TIME  RELATIONS  IN  THEORIES  OF  METRISTS  AND  POETS       3] 

ideas  expressed  and  not  to  the  loudness  of  the  sound.  It  is  not 
clear,  however,  whether  weight  is  to  be  interpreted  as  a  purely  psy- 
chological element  in  the  rhythm  or  whether  its  presence  can  be 
detected  by  some  other  alteration  in  the  speech  than  those  of  force, 
pitch,  length  and  pause. 

Over  against  this  school  of  compromisers  stands  Skeat19  with  the 
flat  statement  "that  English  poetry  depends  wholly  on  accent  and 
can  only  be  studied  by  considering  the  effects  of  accent. ' '  For  him 
accent  and  length  are  distinct  things  and  their  frequent  association 
in  the  same  syllable  are  incidental  matters.  That  there  is  no  neces- 
sary connection  between  accentuation  and  duration  is  also  held  by 
Gurney,20  and  he  holds  further  that  an  accented  syllable  may  occupy 
a  smaller  part  of  the  time  space  between  ictus  and  ictus. 

Inasmuch  as  the  last  named  authority  still  clings  to  the  notion 
that  verse  is  rhythmical  in  the  sense  of  being  "metrical"  it  follows 
for  him  that  rhythm  is  not  latent  in  speech  but  imposed  from  with- 
out (Chap.  XIX).  That  is  to  say,  the  nature  of  the  language  does 
not  make  an  even  flow  of  words  of  the  right  duration;  it  is  only 
by  constraint  that  we  get  the  right  arrangement.  This  is  an  idea 
of  some  significance  and  quite  in  accord  with  Darwin's  idea  that 
music  and  metrical  forms  were  developed  before  language  in  the 
history  of  the  race.  If,  however,  the  Spencerian  doctrine  of  the 
primacy  of  language  is  accepted,  rhythm  ought  to  arise  directly  in 
that  material  and  there  could  be  no  necessity  for  ever  forcing  the 
material  to  fit  the  form.  Perhaps  a  compromiser  will  say  that  only 
some  words  fit  given  rhythms  and  others  have  to  be  squeezed  or 
stretched  to  get  them  in. 

For  Abbott  and  Seeley21  the  names  of  feet  denote  groups  of 
accented  and  unaccented  syllables  without  regard  to  quantity.  Ac- 
cent is  equivalent  to  loud  stress.  The  regularity  of  a  verse  depends 
upon  its  having  the  right  number  of  accents,  and  in  this  respect 
Abbott  finds  most  verses  regular  although  it  is  sometimes  necessary 
to  throw  the  accent  upon  a  weak  monosyllable  in  order  to  make  up 
the  number. 

In  this  connection  Coleridge's  expression22  with  regard  to  the 
meter  of  some  of  his  poems  is  significant.  ' '  The  meter  of  Christabel 
is  not,  strictly  speaking,  irregular  though  it  may  seem  so  for  its 
being  founded  on  a  new  principle,  namely,  that  of  counting  in  each 
line  the  accents,  not  the  syllables.  Though  the  latter  may  vary  from 

™PUlolog.  Soc.  Trans.,  1895-8,  p.  485. 

20 "  The  Power  of  Sound,"  1880,  p.  429. 

'•"•"  English  Lessons  for  English  People,"  1871. 

22 Preface  to  "Christabel,"  1816. 


32  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

seven  to  twelve  yet  in  each  line  the  accents  will  be  found  to  be  only 
four."  This  "new  principle"  though  more  new  in  form  of  ex- 
pression than  in  actual  practise  was  of  great  importance  in  the  subse- 
quent usage  of  the  English  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For  us 
one  of  the  most  instructive  things  about  the  statement  is  not  the 
''new  principle"  but  the  old  with  which  it  is  contrasted.  Nothing  is 
said  about  regularity  of  time  but  it  is  assumed  that  regularity  gen- 
erally is  found  in  the  alternation  of  long  (accented)  and  short  (un- 
accented) syllables  for  that  is  what  is  meant  by  counting  the 
syllables.  For  Coleridge  and  his  friends  the  accent  was  the  basis 
of  both  the  old  and  the  new  principles.  Nothing  else  was  even 
thought  of. 

That  the  ordinary  routine  scansions  will  last  as  long  as  there 
are  children  and  common  people  is  the  verdict  of  Mayor.23  He  is 
"in  favor  of  scanning  by  feet"  and  attempts  to  put  the  ordinary 
accented  feet  of  the  grammars  on  a  scientific  basis;  and  if  he  does 
not  succeed  in  his  attempt  to  be  scientific  he  at  least  makes  a  good 
bold  stand  in  favor  of  the  conventional  English  system.  He  thinks 
that  we  are  in  no  danger  of  falling  into  the  error  of  mistaking  our 
"iambs,"  etc.,  for  quantitative  feet  in  the  classical  sense  simply 
because  English  speaking  people  have  no  ear  for  quantity  as  dis- 
tinct from  accent.  He  refuses  to  recognize  (p.  55)  any  given  time 
for  two  syllables.  On  the  other  hand  the  number  of  syllables  to  a 
foot  is  limited  to  three  unless  slurring  or  elision  takes  place. 

Gummere24  maintains  that  the  unit  in  verse  is  one  accent  together 
with  one  or  more  unaccented  syllables— regularity  rests  in  the  num- 
ber of  light  syllables.  "In  the  Germanic  languages  and  in  nearly 
all  modern  poetry  accent  is  made  the  principle  of  verse;  we  weigh 
our  words,  we  ask  how  much  force,  not  how  much  time  they 
require"  (p.  137).  All  this  in  spite  of  what  has  just  been  quoted 
above  about  the  importance  of  time.  The  conclusion  seems  to  be 
that  equal  time  intervals  are  found  but  their  significance  is 
secondary. 

Schipper  accounts  for  both  accented  and  metrical  verse  in  Eng- 
lish by  the  historical  development  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  Norman  and 
neo-classic  forms  side  by  side.  The  former  strain  gives  the  accentual 
type,  the  latter  the  metrical  type,  and  in  our  contemporary  verse  we 
find  both  types  side  by  side  or  fused  into  one  verse.  The  accentual 
type,  however,  predominates. 

Guest25  is  more  radical  and  seems  to  feel  that  the  intrusion  of 

23 "  Chapters  on  English  Metre,"  1886,  p.  6. 

24  "Handbook  of  Poetics,"  p.  169. 

25  "  A  History  of  English  Rhythms,"  1838. 


TIME  RELATIONS  IN  THEORIES  OF  HETRISTS  AND  POETS       33 

measured  verse  into  the  language  must  not  be  permitted  under  any 
circumstances.  He  says26  (p.  108)  that  it  has  been  "said  that  our 
English  rhythms  are  governed  by  accent;  I,  moreover,  believe  this 
to  be  the  sole  principle  that  regulates  them.  Most  of  our  modern 
writers  on  versification  are  of  a  different  opinion.  The  time  is  oc- 
casionally of  great  importance  to  the  beauty  of  a  verse,  but  never  an 
index  of  its  rhythm."  He  believes  that  "the  rhythms  that  depend 
on  accent  are  independent  of  quantity  in  every  living  language  from 
India  westward."  There  is,  however,  generally  a  sharper  tone 
(though  this  is  not  necessary  either)  and  also  a  lengthening  of  the 
accented  (louder)  syllable  due  to  the  greater  effort  of  enunciation. 
Genetically  considered  all  the  English  verse  forms  spring  from  the 
original  "sectional"  verse  of  our  ancestors  according  to  Guest.  As 
the  sectioning  of  the  line  becomes  more  elaborate,  and  the  arrange- 
ment of  forms  more  variable  we  get  the  different  types  of  modern 
rhythm;  the  accent  always  remains,  however,  the  basis  of  the 
rhythmic  structure.  We  get  the  well-known  forms  iambic,  dactyllic, 
etc.,  according  as  the  accent  stands  in  the  first,  second  or  third 
position  in  the  foot. 
MEd.  Skeat,  1882. 


CHAPTER   V 

TIME  RELATIONS  AS  TREATED  BY  THE  EXPERIMENTALISTS 

BRUCKE1  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  give  experimental  de- 
terminations of  the  Taktgleichkeit  of  verse.  He  asserts  that  "in 
German  iambs  and  trochees  it  is  not  the  quantity,  not  the  alterna- 
tion of  long  and  short  syllables,  which  holds  together  the  rhythm 
but  the  repeated  rising  and  falling  of  the  accent  at  regular  inter- 
vals" (p.  64).  It  is  the  interval  between  accents  that  really  matters. 
The  emphasis  is  thus  kept  on  time  relations  but  thrown  off  from  the 
individual  syllables  on  to  the  foot  as  a  whole.  There  is  a  strong 
suspicion  aroused  that  Briicke  scanned  his  lines.  Triplett  and  San- 
ford,2  using  a  combined  tapping  and  voice  record,  but  relying  on  the 
tapping,  found  great  regularity  in  the  intervals  between  accents  in 
nursery  rhymes.  The  method  has  already  been  criticized.  It  prob- 
ably accounts  for  the  results.  Hurst  and  McKay3  got  similar  re- 
sults, but  in  their  case  large  variations  were  deliberately  discarded ; 
they  never  read  naturally  but  always  scanned.  These  two  considera- 
tions invalidate  the  results  as  far  as  the  present  point  is  concerned. 

Bolton4  says,  "In  order  for  vocal  utterances  to  form  a  rhythmic 
series,  they  must  occur  at  regular  intervals  of  time  which  can  not 
exceed  or  fall  much  below  certain  limits. ' '  The  different  intensities, 
however,  give  unity  to  the  series.  The  above  statement  has  no  exT 
perimental  grounds.  Squire5  (p.  541)  says,  "  Temporalness  in  its 
connotation  of  regular  succession  is  the  basal  principle  of  rhythm." 
However,  changes  of  intensity  can  also  produce  a  rhythm  in  a 
regular  time  series.  The  doctrine  here  seems  to  be  that  there  must 
be  regularity  in  time  first  and  that  the  grouping  may  be  caused  by 
temporal  or  accentual  variations  of  the  regular  series. 

Wallin6  (p.  32)  says  that  "the  question  of  the  quantitative  char- 
acter of  poetry  or  prose,  is  closed.  All  speech  is  quantitative,  and 
the  distinction,  popularly  and  confidently  posited  between  quan- 
titative and  non-quantitative  verse  is  grounded  upon  fallacious  as- 
sumptions." His  experiments  give  no  warrant  for  such  a  gratu- 

1  "  Die  physiologischen  Grundlagen  der  neuhochdeutsehen  Verskunst." 

2  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  12,  1901. 

3  Toronto  Studies,  1. 

4  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  6,  157,  1893. 
6  American  Journal  of  Psychology,  12,  1901. 

8  Yale  Studies,  9. 

34 


TIME  RELATIONS  AS  TREATED  BY  THE  EXPERIMENTALISTS      35 

items  attack  upon  a  distinction  which  is  founded  upon  no  assump- 
tions whatever.  Of  course,  no  one  in  his  senses  ever  doubted  that 
speech  is  quantitative  but  there  has  been  grave  doubt  whether 
quantity  in  speech  gives  rise  to  the  rhythm  of  verse.  So  far  as 
Wallin 's  results  show  anything  at  all  on  this  point  they  indicate  that 
quantity  is  not  responsible  for  the  phenomena  of  rhythm.  "The 
regularity  of  the  intervals  in  a  given  set  of  records  of  English 
poetry,  the  intervals  of  which  are  mostly  of  the  two  syllable  type, 
and  the  scansion  of  which  is  rhythmically  free  was  about  3  per  cent, 
higher  than  the  corresponding  set  of  records  of  English  prose,  the 
reading  of  which  is  rhythmically  free  (32  per  cent,  of  variation  in 
this  case).  When  the  scansion  or  reading  is  natural,  artistic  and 
rhythmically  free  the  complex  centroid  intervals  are  only  slightly 
more  regular  in  poetry  than  in  prose"  (pp.  118,  119).  But  cer- 
tainly poetry  is  more  rhythmical  than  prose.  No  reasons  are  given 
why  the  changes  in  quantity  within  a  line,  so  far  as  they  have  any 
meaning  at  all  and  are  not  simply  natural  differences  in  time  value 
of  the  sounds,  should  not  be  regarded  as  concomitants  of  the  accent 
rather  than  as  themselves  determining  the  rhythm.  The  centroid 
system  advocated  by  Wallin  or  Scripture  is  likable  and  sensible,  but. 
to  try  to  graft  it  onto  the  older  time  or  music  theory  of  verse  rhythm 
is  equivalent  to  abandoning  it  altogether.  Wallin  himself  seems  to 
recognize  this  when  he  says  (p.  113),  "nor  are  centroid  intervals 
to  be  conceived  as  a  succession  of  bars  of  invariable  length,  nor  as 
feet  of  similar  length,  nor  as  successive  quanta  of  time  conforming 
to  an  invariable  measure."  The  centroid  system  of  Wallin  and 
Scripture  is  the  equivalent  of  the  section  plan  of  the  metrists  and 
of  the  system  of  monopressures,  if  I  understand  the  latter.7 

The  centroid  is  really  an  accented,  or  as  some  would  call  it,  a 
weighted  syllable.  Its  marks  of  differentiation  are  increased  loud- 
ness,  duration  and  heightened  pitch.  Wallin  assumes  that  of  these 
duration  is  the  essential  one,  but  he  gives  no  reason  for  saying  so  and 
certainly  the  more  obvious  one  is  the  increased  loudness.  Such  a 
centroid  is,  in  the  simplest  terms,  a  part  of  the  sound  series  marked 
by  one  stress  maximum.  As  used  by  Wallin  the  analysis  of  verse 
into  such  elements  leaves  no  essential  distinction  between  prose  and 
verse.  According  to  the  arrangements  printed  by  Scripture8  for 
certain  verses  of  poetry  there  is  nothing  left  corresponding  to  a 
rhythm  pattern  for  the  verse.  When  tables  are  printed  giving  only 
the  average  number  of  syllables  per  centroid,  or  the  average  time 

7  Cf.  Skeat,  Philolog.  Soc.  Trans.,  1895-8.     Only  a  few  syllables  can  be  pro- 
nounced on  one  breath  pressure  and  this  group  is  made  the  rhythmic  unit. 
8 "  Elements." 


36  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

value  of  a  centroid  group,  the  only  possible  data  for  the  analysis 
into  rhythmic  constituents  are  obscured.  Surely  rhythm  consists  of 
something  more  than  the  mere  succession  of  these  groups  at  more 
or  less  regular  intervals  of  time.  Are  we  to  say  that  all  rhythms  are 
the  same,  both  prose  and  verse— just  this  simple  succession?  Such 
an  answer  would  be  far  from  satisfactory;  the  centroid  theory 
must  develop  a  more  thorough-going  explanation  of  the  phenomena 
which  make  one  rhythm  different  from  another  before  it  can  be  con- 
sidered as  anything  more  than  a  way  of  summarizing  certain  obser- 
vations which  do  not  reach  to  the  details.  Inasmuch,  however,  as 
the  centroid  theory  gets  beyond  the  notion  that  there  is  no  rhythm 
without  extreme  regularity  of  time  relations  it  marks  an  immense 
step  in  advance. 

Briicke,  Bolttin,  Squire  and  McDougall  recognize  an  effect  of 
intensity  (or  accent  in  some  form)  only  as  a  subsidiary  factor  enter- 
ing in  where  there  is  already  a  uniform  time  series.  Squire9  and 
McDougall10  even  conceive  of  a  rhythm  without  any  accentual  or  at 
least  without  an  intensive  variety  whatever. 

Meumann  considers  time  and  intensity  as  compensating  fac- 
tors, either  of  which  may  take  the  place  of  the  other.  Just  what 
this  means  for  verse  rhythm  in  view  of  the  very  regular  association 
of  the  two  in  one  syllable  is  hard  to  understand.  There  is  no 
experimental  evidence  that  a  stressed  syllable  when  short  in  time  is 
correspondingly  more  intense.  What  evidence  there  is  points  just 
the  other  way. 

The  apparatus  adopted  in  the  present  investigation  is  not  de- 
signed to  measure  intensities  nor  have  I  been  particularly  concerned 
with  the  question  of  their  measurement.  Even  if  we  had  a  complete 
plot  showing  the  absolute  and  relative  intensities  of  all  the  sounds 
of  any  given  series  of  words  or  for  any  given  verse,  the  question  of 
the  final  basis  of  verse  rhythm  would  be  no  nearer  solved  than  it  is 
to-day.  We  now  know  that  intensities  are  there  and  we  know  their 
serial  order.  It  is  the  times  by  which  they  are  separated  which  we 
do  not  know  and  it  is  these  that  we  must  be  able  to  describe  if  we 
are  going  to  give  a  full  account  of  the  conditions  under  which  the 
particular  rhythmic  phenomena  of  verse  arise. 

The  only  point  with  regard  to  the  intensities  in  verse  which  it 
would  help  us  to  know  about  is  their  sequence  in  such  a  phrase  as 
pa  ta  pa'  or  pa'  ta  pa.  In  such  groups  there  appears  to  be  a  certain 
hierarchy  of  intensities.  Similarly  in  such  a  line  as  papa'  papa' 
papa'  papa'  such  a  hierarchy  seems  to  exist,  the  second  accented 

9  Amer.  Jour,  of  Psychol.,  12,  509,  541,  1901. 
"Psychol.  Rev.,  9,  461,  1902. 


TIME  RELATIONS  AS  TREATED  BY  THE  EXPERIMENTALISTS      37 

syllable  being  stronger  or  neavier  than  the  first.  But  these  are  ques- 
tions of  the  detail  differences  of  particular  rhythm  figures.  To 
answer  this  is  to  tell  nothing  of  the  relative  importance  of  duration 
and  stress.  Such  questions  will  have  to  be  answered  if  it  turns  out 
in  the  end  that  stress  differences  of  this  minor  sort  are  the  only 
differences  that  can  be  found  between  rhythms  of  different  types  or 
figures;  meanwhile  such  details  may  be  left  aside  while  the  other 
possible  differences  of  the  patterns  are  being  examined. 


CHAPTER   VI 

EXPERIMENTAL   RESULTS 
(a)   Procedure 

THE  technique  of  the  experiments  has  already  been  indicated  in 
describing  the  apparatus.  The  subject  was  asked  to  recite  the  verses 
naturally  and  at  the  same  time  distinctly.  None  of  the  subjects1 
found  anything  in  the  conditions  of  the  experiment  to  prevent 
doing  this.  In  the  case  of  nonsense  syllables,  which  were  always 

TABLE    I 

THE  IAMBIC  TETRAMETER,  Papa'  papa'  papa'  papa'.  At  the  left  the  reader 
and  the  number  of  his  readings.  Under  "  Pa,"  the  average  time  value2  of  the 
first  syllable  of  each  foot.  Under  "V,"  the  mean  variation  per  cent.3  Under 
"  pa',"  the  second  syllable.  Under  "  foot,"  the  average  time  of  the  foot.  Under 
"  ratio,"  the  average  quotient  of  the  accented  divided  by  the  unaccented  syllable. 

W54  Pa  V  pa'  V  Foot  V  Ratio  V 

1st  foot  20  9.6  57  8.0  77  7.1  2.9  8.1 

2d  foot  20  9.6  58  7.3  78  7.0  2.9  9.1 

3d  foot  20  8.7  57  7.6  77  7.2  2.9  9.0 

4th  foot  20  9.7  101  21.2  121 

H41 

1st  foot  25  6.0  52  4.7  77  3.8  2.1  94 

2d  foot  23  6.7  51  5.1  75  3.1  2.3  9.2 

3d  foot  24  5.5  49  4.4  73  3.2  2.1  6.7 

4th  foot  23  5.9  93  6.5  115 

F73 

1st  foot  18  9.0  36  5.0  55  4.4  2.0  9.8 

2d  foot  16  8.1  36  5.3  52  4.9  2.2  8.5 

3d  foot  16  6.5  36  6.5  52  6.4  2.3  7.5 

4th  foot  17  6.3  71  9.5  88 

B48 

1st  foot  20  7.0  53     4.4  73     3.4                    2.7     8.5 

2d  foot  21  6.9  55     4.4  75     4.3                    2.7     7.6 

3d  foot  21  4.9  52     5.0  73     3.5                    2.5     7.0 

4th  foot  22  6.4  127  12.4  149 

1  The  readers  in  these  experiments  were :  W,  Dr.  F.  L.  Wells,  then  Lecturer 
in  Barnard  College;  R,  A.  E.  Rejall,  graduate  student  in  psychology;  L,  D.  O. 
Lyon,  graduate  student  in  psychology;  H,  H.  L.  Hollingworth,  then  Assistant 
in  Psychology;  F,  S.  Froeberg,  sometime  Assistant  in  Psychology;  B,  the  author. 

2  The  time  is  given,  in  all  the  tables,  in  hundredths  of  a  second. 

3  In  all  the  tables,  the  columns  headed  "  V  "  give  the  mean  variation  ex- 
pressed as  a  per  cent,  of  the  total  time. 

38 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  39 

TABLE    II 

THE  TROCHAIC  TETRAMETER,   pa'pa  pa'pa  pa' pa  pa' pa.     Under   Pa'  the   first 

(accented)    syllable.     Under  pa  the  second    (unaccented)    syllable. 

Otherwise  the  columns  correspond  to  Table  I. 

W46  Pa'  V  pa  V  Foot  V  Eatio  V 

1st  foot  22  5.6  48  6.4  71  4-9  .45  8.4 

2d  foot  22  5.4  51  6.4  73  Jt,l  .44  8.2 

3d  foot  22  5.5  49  7.0  72  5.4  .46  8.6 

4th  foot  22  7.3  88  18.3  110 

H47 

1st  foot  34  6.0  33  4-6  67     4-2                   1.03     7.1 

2d  foot  34  4.5  33  4.1  67     3.2                   1.02     6.7 

3d  foot  34  4.8  33  5.7  67     4.//                   1.04     7.4 

4th  foot  35  4.9  99  9.7  133 

F40 

1st  foot  26  5.9  33  5.7  59  3.8  .78  7.8 

2d  foot  25  6.0  31  6.3  56  4.0  .81  9.4 

3d  foot  26  5.1  31  5.0  57  2.9  .86  8.6 

4th  foot  25  6.0  67  9.6  92 

B  50 

1st  foot  28  7.0  32  6\9  60  4.8  .88  9.6 

2d  foot  28  7.7  32  6.8  60  5.4  .90  9J 

3d  foot  28  8.1  32  7.2  60  5.1  .87  ^.3 

4th  foot  28  7.6  102  mtf  130 

read  as  lines  of  verse,  the  reading  was  interrupted  after  each  com- 
plete revolution  of  the  drum.  In  other  cases  the  reading  was  con- 
tinuous for  a  longer  period.  The  material  consisted  of  nonsense 
syllables  in  tetrameter  lines  of  different  rhythms  and  of  specimen 
bits  of  well-known  English  poems,  This  latter  material  was  selected 
first  on  the  ground  of  its  familiarity  and  second  on  the  ground  of 
the  possession  of  consonant  combinations  which  could  be  most  readily 
read  from  the  record.  No  attempt  was  made  to  cover  the  entire 
field  of  English  rhythm;  in  fact  the  verses  chosen  are  almost  all 
tetrameters.  It  is  well  to  have  them  as  comparable  as  possible  with 
each  other  and  the  tetrameter  is  the  most  frequent  meter  in  our  non- 
heroic  verse. 

Having  determined  the  beginnings  of  all  the  words  and  syllables 
in  any  record  the  durations  of  these  were  measured  from  the  begin- 
ning of  one  to  the  beginning  of  the  next.  The  validity  of  this  pro- 
cedure has  been  discussed  above.  Even  if  the  record  permitted 
of  an  exact  determination  of  the  end  of  any  sound,  which  it  seldom 
does,  I  am  convinced  that  we  ought  still  to  count  any  gap  which 
may  occur  between  two  sounds  as  being  a  prolongation  of  the  pre- 
ceding sound.  Such  a  gap  can  not  be  excluded  from  the  rhythm 


TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 


«  "e? 

|       ,  + 

^1  <2 

°  I  1 

C      rt 


00 
O    00    00 

fc» 

05 
CO    lO    O 

r-  t^  co 

P-l     GO 

B 


05    to 

©o'  ©o 


tO  Tf  Tfl     CO  CO  CO  O5 
l^  !>•  CM     00  GO  00  O 


00* 


10    >H    tq 

©o'  to'  c> 


O5    CO    00 
CO    CO    0 


»OCO»OIO  CMCMCOrJ* 

CMCMCMCM  CMCMCMCM 


§r>+2-&O 

§0000 
^•S*^  §e^e°«eo,M~l 

3        ^        QC       ^       '^3       -4-^ 

«          rH    CM    CO    •* 


EXPERIMENTAL   RESULTS 


41 


05    ^ 
b>    CO 


la 


M 


OS  OS  <T>  CO     GO  b-  GO  00     b- 
GOOOOOCO     IO  to  to  GO     IQ 


oq  to  to    »o  ^ 

to  to*  ci    06  06 


<M  GO     CO  CO  <M  CO 

to  os    co  co  co  o 


H  H 
g     5 


a 


a 


oqto>H         e^tooqcs        >111-^00.00. 


(M  CO    CO 


to 


00 


a 


4       CM  O 


«2  o  o  «*H   2  t2 


-8  •*  ^  o 

§000 


-M    CO    Tfi  i-H    5^1    CO 


42  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

TABLE    V 


THE  TETRAMETER  LINE,  Oh  pa'pa  pa'pa  pa' 

pa  pa'. 

At  the  bottom  the 

first 

"  pa  "  is  combined  with  the  second  "  pa' 

"  as  an  iamb. 

W40 

Oh       V               Pa' 

V 

pa 

V 

Foot 

V 

Ratio 

V 

Oh  pa'  pa 

25     9.8              17 

5.9 

17 

5.6 

34 

4.5 

1.04 

7.1 

pa'  pa 

17 

6.0 

17 

5.8 

35 

5.2 

1.03 

6.2 

pa'  pa 

18 

5.9 

17 

5.7 

35 

4.8 

1.05 

6.9 

pa' 

168 

19.0 

pa  pa' 

34 

5.3 

1.07 

6.2 

H44 

Oh  Pa'  pa 

27     5.9             26 

6.9 

41 

6.2 

67 

4.2 

.64 

10.9 

pa'pa 

25 

5.8 

40 

6.6 

66 

3.9 

.62 

9.6 

pa'  pa 

26 

7.2 

41 

6.0 

66 

3.5 

.62 

12.0 

pa' 

102 

15.0 

pa  pa' 

^ 

67 

3.6 

.63 

10.7 

F  40 

Oh  Pa'  pa 

32     7.9             22 

7.9 

24 

7.2 

46 

4.5 

.93 

12.6 

pa'pa 

23 

6.9 

24 

9.1 

47 

4.7 

.94 

12.4 

pa'pa 

23 

7.9 

27 

7.3 

49 

5.2 

.86 

11.3 

pa' 

62 

8.3 

pa  pa' 

46 

3.6 

.95 

12.0 

B  40 

Oh  Pa'  pa 

27     8.3            34 

6.4 

19 

10.7 

54 

4.7 

1.8 

11.8 

pa'  pa 

34 

8.4 

18 

12.2 

53 

4.8 

1.9 

17.4 

pa'pa 

34 

6.0 

19 

8.3 

53 

3.5 

1.8 

12.1 

pa' 

109 

8.5 

papa' 

53 

4-4 

1.8 

16.0 

altogether  and  certainly  it  does  not  seem  sensible  to  call  it  part  of  a 
succeeding  sound.  In  the  case  of  the  pause  at  the  end  of  a  verse  or 
couplet  I  have  made  no  attempt,  as  a  rule,  to  separate  the  last 
syllable  and  the  pause  proper.  As  a  consequence  the  final  syllable 
does  not  enter  into  my  calculations.  If  the  verse  is  read  as  "run 
on"  into  the  next  verse  this  last  pause  is  significant;  if  the  verse  is 
read  as  closing  a  stanza  or  as  the  end  of  a  sentence  the  pause  at  the 
end  has  little  or  no  meaning.  I  have  contrived  in  nearly  every  case 
to  avoid  such  dead  endings  by  having  the  subject  read  another  verse 
or  two  which  was  not  counted.  The  nonsense  verses  were  read  one 
after  another  as  if  they  made  a  long  stanza.  The  pauses  therefore 
are  true  verse  pauses. 

(&)  Duration  of  Feet 

One  of  the  first  places  to  look  for  that  regularity  which  is  sup- 
posed to  characterize  rhythm  is  in  the  time  value  of  the  "foot," 
or  verse  unit.  The  question  here  is,  is  one  foot  in  a  verse  of 
approximately  the  same  duration  as  another,  or  is  the  presence  of 
such  equality  only  accidental  in  some  verses,  others  not  showing  it? 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  43 

The  force  of  an  analogy  with  music  is,  of  course,  dependent  upon 
the  presence  of  such  equality  between  the  feet  considered  as 
measures.  The  facts  which  bear  upon  this  point  will  be  found  in 
the  tables  under  the  heading  "Foot."  Glancing  through  Tables  I. 

TABLE  VI 

THE  EFFECT  OF  CHANGING  THE  SYLLABLES  IN  IAMBIC  TETRAMETERS.     Records 
for  two  readings;  the  first  day's  reading  above,  the  second  below. 


w 

Cases 

Pa 

V 

pa'r 

V 

Foot 

V 

Ratio   V 

1st 

foot 

14       1st  day 

17 

3.8 

75 

5.4 

92 

4.5 

4.4 

6.1 

17       2d  day 

18 

64 

79 

3.6 

97 

4-1? 

4.3 

4-2 

2d 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

6.3 

77 

3.6 

93 

3.5 

4.7 

7.0 

2d  day 

18 

3.5 

80 

5.0 

97 

4.5 

4.3 

4-1 

3d 

foot 

1st  day 

16 

4.2 

77 

5.6 

93 

4.7 

4.9 

6.6 

2d  day 

18 

5.1 

77 

6.3 

96 

5.5 

4.3 

8.1 

4th 

foot 

1st  day 

16 

7.6 

116 

6.6 

132 

2d  day 

17 

4.2 

129 

11.0 

146 

W 

pa'ra 

1st 

foot 

15       1st  day 

17 

4.1 

65 

5.2 

83 

3.8 

3.8 

8.0 

17       2d  'day 

19 

6.0 

68 

4^1 

87 

3.7 

3.6 

5.7 

2d 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

6.6 

67 

5.5 

84 

5.3 

3.9 

5.3 

2d  day 

18 

3.8 

71 

2.9 

89 

2.8 

3.9 

4.0 

3d 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

3.6 

65 

7.0 

81 

4.6 

3.8 

6.9 

2d  day 

18 

6.6 

68 

2.8 

87 

2.7 

3.8 

5.1 

4th 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

4.3 

124 

12.1 

141 

2d  day 

18 

5.5 

158 

14.1 

177 

W 

pa'rst 

1st 

foot 

13       1st  day 

17 

4.7 

65 

5.3 

83 

5.2 

4.0 

5.5 

13       2d  day 

18 

6.4 

76 

4-5 

93 

4.3 

4.2 

6.4 

2d 

foot 

1st  day 

18 

5.2 

67 

54 

84 

4.0 

3.8 

7.7 

2d  day 

18 

5.5 

77 

3.7 

95 

3.6 

4.4 

4.9 

3d 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

8.7 

64 

6.6 

80 

5.6 

3.8 

9.5 

2d  day 

18 

4-1 

76 

4.8 

93 

4.0 

4.3 

5.7 

4th 

foot 

1st  day 

17 

5.1 

119 

20.3 

136 

2d  day 

18 

5.8 

143 

23.0 

161 

to  IX.,  it  is  evident  that  the  nonsense  feet  are  very  regular  for 
each  of  the  four  subjects  in  each  of  the  five  rhythms  examined. 
There  are  minor  exceptions  as,  for  instance,  in  Table  I.,  Subject  H, 
shows  a  slight  acceleration  in  his  reading  from  the  first  to  the  third 
foot.  The  low  variation  of  his  readings  here  makes  it  quite  im- 
possible that  this  should  be  the  result  of  chance.4  But  on  the  whole 

*The  variations  are  expressed  throughout  in  the  amount  of  the  mean 
variation  (A.D.)  of  the  series  per  centum  of  the  average  reading.  This  gives 
a  figure  that  can  be  used  for  the  comparison  of  the  variation  of  one  series 
with  that  of  another  series  which  has  a  somewhat  different  average  value. 
The  reader  should,  however,  be  very  cautious  about  making  such  comparisons. 
The  "  probable  error  "  ( P.E. )  of  one  of  these  averages  would  be  equal  to  the 


44  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE   RHYTHM 

TABLE    VII 
THE  EFFECT  OF  CHANGING  THE  SYLLABLES  IN  IAMBIC  TETRAMETERS 

H 17  Pa  V                          pa'  V  Foot      V                        Katio  V 

1st  foot  26  6.9                     60  3.4                    86     3.5                    2.4     8.1 

2d  foot  26  5.2                     59  4.2                    85     3.4                    2.3     6.1 

3d  foot  26  4.9                    60  4.3                    87     3.7                     2.3     6.9 

4th  foot  27  4-9  133  7.2  161 

H  33  pa'r 

1st  foot  27  6.1  63  3.8                     89     2.9                    2.3     7.2 

2d  foot  27  6.0  61  3.3                     89     2.8                     2.2     6.2 

3d  foot  27  4-2  61  4.3                    89     3.2                     2.2     6.9 

4th  foot  27  4-7  121  9.0  148 

H  32  pa'rs 

1st  foot  26  5.6  68  3.2                     95     2.1                    2.6     7.7 

2d  foot  25  5.1  68  3.2                     93     2.4                    2.6     6.7 

3d  foot  26  $.1  67  2.7                     93     2.7                     2.5     5.1 

4th  foot  26  5.0  130  8.4  157 

H  34  pa'rst 

1st  foot  27  8.1  67  5.0                    94     4.3                    2.5  10.0 

2d  foot  26  5.5  67  3.7  93     2.8                     2.6     7.2 

3d  foot  26  6.3  67  4.2  93     3.5                     2.6     8./ 

4th  foot  26  4.2  133  7.5  159 

the  feet  may  be  said  to  have  equal  duration  in  the  nonsense  verse. 
No  such  equality  appears,  however,  in  the  examples  of  actual  verse. 
Even  in  the  most  simple  and  regular  cases  when  there  can  be  no 
question  raised  as  to  the  correctness  of  the  scansion  the  irregulari- 
ties are  glaring. 

In  the  case  given  in  Table  X.,  for  instance,  which  can  be  put 
in  this  form: 

Subject  I  come  from  haunts  of  coot  and  hern 

H  70  66  54  H 

R  62  82  58  <0         «M 

where  the  figures  represent  the  times  for  Subjects  H  and  R  re- 
spectively. Not  only  are  the  feet  not  by  any  means  equal  but  the 
inequalities  are  not  subject  to  the  same  tendency  for  the  two 
readers. 

mean  variation  (A.D.)  divided  by  the  square  root  of  the  number  of  cases. 
This  can  be  obtained  from  the  per  cent,  value  given  in  the  table  by  multiplying 
by  the  average  reading  and  dividing  by  the  square  root  of  the  number  of  cases. 
The  number  of  cases  is  large  in  the  case  of  the  nonsense  material,  because  the 
variability  itself  was  under  consideration.  In  the  ordinary  verse  only  an 
approximate  average  was  required  and  only  ten  cases  as  a  rule  were  taken. 
The  apparent  increase  in  accuracy  from  the  greater  number  of  cases  is  in  fact 
negatived  by  a  constant  shift  in  the  tempo  of  the  reading  so  that  fifty  cases 
do  not  form  as  homogeneous  a  series  as  ten. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  45 

TABLE    VIII 
THE  EFFECT  OF  CHANGING  THE  SYLLABLES  IN  IAMBIC  TETRAMETERS — Continued 


F31 

1st  foot 
2d  foot 

Pa 
17 
17 

V 

104 

9.9 

pa' 
39 
38 

V 

5.4 
7.0 

Foot 
55 
55 

V 
4.7 
6.1 

Ratio 
2.3 
2.3 

V 
10.6 
10.3 

3d  foot 

16 

10.4 

36 

5.5 

52 

5.2 

2.3 

11-4 

4th  foot 

16 

10.3 

61 

7.2 

77 

F40 

1st  foot 

16 

9.9 

pa'r 

48 

6.2 

65 

5.0 

3.1 

10.6 

2d  foot 

17 

6.2 

47 

5.9 

64 

5.5 

2.8 

8.1 

3d  foot 

16 

7.5 

47 

5.6 

63 

4-7 

2.9 

8.5 

4th  foot 

16 

7.7 

69 

7.1 

85 

F40 

1st  foot 

14 

7.4 

pa'rs 
49 

8.7 

62 

7.1 

3.5 

9.9 

2d  foot 

14 

9.9 

49 

10.2 

63 

9.1 

3.4 

11.1 

3d  foot 

14 

9.2 

48 

8.3 

61 

7.4 

3.4 

10.S 

4th  foot 

14 

9.5 

73 

6.9 

87 

F41 

1st  foot 

14 

10.2 

pa'rst 
48 

7.4 

63 

6.8 

3.5 

13.4 

2d  foot 

14 

9.5 

47 

6.6 

61 

5.8 

3.4 

10.6 

3u  foot 

14 

10.5 

47 

6.8 

60 

6.7 

3.5 

10.8 

4th  foot 

14 

11.0 

73 

6.5 

87 

TABLE    IX 
THE  EFFECT  OF  CHANGING  THE  SYLLABLES  IN  IAMBIC  TETRAMETERS — Continued 


B23 

Pa 

V 

pa' 

V 

Foot 

V 

Ratio    V 

1st  foot 

18 

5.5 

40 

6.7 

58 

4.8 

2.3 

10.7 

2d  foot 

18 

8.0 

41 

4.5 

60 

4.2 

2.3 

9.7 

3d  foot 

18 

6.7 

40 

6.8 

57 

5.1 

2.2 

10.4 

4th  foot 

19 

7.0 

116 

9.0 

135 

B40 

pa'r 

1st  foot 

17 

6.0 

44 

4.9 

61 

3.2 

2.6 

9.5 

2d  foot 

17 

4.8 

44 

4.6 

61 

3.7 

2.6 

5.7 

3d  foot 

17 

5.5 

44 

4-1 

61 

3.0 

2.5 

74 

4th  foot 

18 

5.3 

121 

5.2 

139 

B39 

pa'rs 

1st  foot 

16 

5.7 

48 

6.3 

64 

4.2 

3.0 

11.1 

2d  foot 

16 

4.6 

49 

5.3 

64 

3.7 

3.1 

8.3 

3d  foot 

16 

4.6 

49 

4-9 

64 

3.4 

3.1 

7.2 

4th  foot 

16 

5.0 

124 

6.6 

140 

B40 

pa'rst 

1st  foot 

16 

5.2 

53 

7.5 

67 

6.4 

3.4 

9.0 

2d  foot 

16 

5.9 

53 

7.6 

69 

6.5 

3.5 

7.0 

3d  foot 

15 

5.1 

53 

7.2 

69 

5.5 

3.5 

9.0 

4th  foot 

16 

5.8 

127 

6.0 

143 

a    V 

b'  V 

Foot  V 

b'/a  V 

b'/a5  V 

38  4.2 

32  10.1 

70  5.5 

.84  12.2 

1.3  9.1 

24  9.5 

41  6.1 

66  4.7 

1.74  13.8 

1.5  8.7 

28  S.-6 

26  8.1 

54  4.7 

.93  12.9 

1.6  14.8 

16  1L1 

101  4.4 

117 

307 

274  3.9 

46  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

TABLE    XA 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H  OF  THE  VERSE,  /  come  from  haunts  of  coot  and 
hern.     Under  "  a  "  and  "  b,"  the  unaccented  and  accented 

syllables  respectively. 
a  b' 

I  come 

from    haunts 
of         coot 
and      hern 
Verse 

Next  verse 
6  Come  divided  by  from,  etc. 

TABLE    XB 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  R  OF  THE  SAME  VERSE 

a                  b'  ^         a       V  b'       V  Foot  V                    b'/a     V 

I                 come  32  10.8  30  9.8  62  5.7                 .93  14.8 

from           haunts  30     9.0  52  4.8  82  5.9               1.74     7.2 

of                coot  22     8.5  36  7.0  58  4.8               1.63  12.7 

and             hern  20     8.5  54  11.8  74 

Verse  276 

Next  verse  246  4.9 

TABLE    XlA 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H  OF  THE  VERSE,  The  stag  at  eve  had  drunk  his  fill 

a  b'  a        V  b'       V  Foot     V  Ratio      V 

The  stag  19     8.3  46     5.2  65     4-5  2.4       9.3 

ac  eve  13  1J,.8  40     4.0  53     5.7  3.2     18.2 

had  drunk  18     8.6  41     2.6  59     3.2  2.4     10.3 

his  fill  28     9.3  106     5.9  134 

Verse  311 

TABLE    XlB 
AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  R  OF  THE  SAME  VERSE 

a  b'  a       V  b'  V  Foot  V                     b/a        V 

The  stag  19  16.0  47  8.0  67  7.2                2.6     16.0 

at  eve  19     8.8  41  7.6  60  6.7                2.1       9.0 

had  drunk  38     8.7  32  6.2  70  5.0                  .85  10.0 

his  fill  24  11.1  63  9.2  87 

Verse  284 

Next  verse  313  4.8 

Any  of  the  other  verses  will  serve  to  bring  out  the  same  fact. 
Only  one  case  (Table  XI.). 

Subject  The  stag  at  eve          had  drunk          his  fill 

H  65  53  59 

R  67  60  70 

shows  anything  like  the  regularity  which  occurs  in  the  case  of  the 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS 


47 


nonsense  verses.  Other  selections  are  not  so  regular  in  form  and 
the  scansion  is  open  to  some  question.  In  some  cases  no  attempt 
has  been  made  to  scan  the  verse  and  the  reader  is  left  to  exercise 
his  own  ingenuity  if  he  thinks  that  he  can  find  any  combination  mak- 
ing uniform  feet  in  a  verse  with  separate  syllables,  such  as  those, 
for  instance,  of  the  second  half  of  Table  XII. 


TABLE    XII 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  L.     The  time  of  each  syllable  is  below  it  and 
below  that  the  mv.  per  cent. 

Al  most  u  pon  the  wes          tern         wave  Verse 


pon 


22 

34 

11 

26 

11 

28 

15 

48 

9.0 

8.8 

13.0 

18.0 

10.0 

20.0 

7.0 

9.6 

Res 

ted 

the 

broad 

bright 

sun 

28 

20 

13 

37 

20 

89 

22.0 

19.0 

15.0 

9.5 

19.0 

6.5 

When 

that 

strange 

shape 

drove 

sud 

den 

iy 

21 

16 

45 

46 

28 

28 

11 

36 

9.0 

17.0 

12.0 

12.0 

8.6 

8.0 

13.0 

21.0 

Be 

twixt 

us 

and 

the 

sun 

Pause 

17 

28 

27 

27 

12 

40 

99 

94 

84 

9.6 

14.0 

16.0 

6.7 

14.0 

195 


207 


194 


250 


But  such  puzzles  as  this  excepted  a  perusal  of  the  tables  will 
convince  anyone  that  there  are  divisions  corresponding  pretty  closely 
to  the  conventional  feet  and  having  somewhat  the  same  duration 
even  though  there  is  nothing  that  could  be  called  equality  between 
them.  Such  an  example  as  the  nursery  rime  "Pease  porridge 

TABLE    XIII 

THE  AVERAGE  TIME  FOR  VERSE  AND  THIRD  FOOT  FOR  EACH  OF  FOUR  READERS 

IN  EACH  RHYTHM 

w  H  F  B 

Verse    3d  Foot 


Pa  pa' 

Pa  pa'r 

436 

96 

Pa  pa'rs 

440 

87 

Pa  pa'rst 

442 

93 

Pa  pa' 

353 

77 

Pa'  pa 

326 

72 

Oh  pa'  pa 

297 

35 

Pa  ta  pa' 

345 

74 

Pa'  ta  pa 

289 

63 

Average 

366 

75 

Verse 

3d  Foot 

Verse 

3d  Foot 

Verse 

3d  Foot 

419 

87 

238 

52 

310 

57 

450 

89 

•277 

63 

322 

61 

438 

93 

273 

61 

332 

64 

438 

93 

271 

60 

348 

69 

340 

73 

247 

52 

370 

73 

334 

67 

264 

57 

310 

60 

328 

66 

236 

49 

296 

53 

367 

86 

286 

62 

312 

59 

397 

86 

261 

58 

264 

60 

386 

82 

264 

58 

319 

62 

48 


TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 


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EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  49 

hot"  which  is  cited  by  Poe  as  a  verse  having  feet  of  equal  duration, 
will  serve  to  show  how  far  there  really  is  equality.  The  scansion 
is  Foe's,  the  figures  from  Table  XIV. 

Pease  porridge  hot,  pease  porridge  cold, 

49                    38  113  48  52  106 

Pease  porridge  in  the  pot,  nine  days           old. 

49                    46                   43  48  57  46  116 

Taking  account  of  the  pauses  the  feet  certainly  maintain  a  pretty 
constant  length  (and  this  testifies  to  the  accuracy  of  Poe's  ear)  but 
there  is  no  real  equality  between  them.  The  same  thing  can  be  seen 
in  Table  XV.,  where  not  even  the  three  words  Break,  break,  break 
occupy  equal  times,  but  where  well-defined  feet  are  in  evidence. 

In  some  cases  such  "feet"  are  only  to  be  discovered  by  a  viola- 
tion of  the  conventional  scansion.  Table  XVI.  gives 

Where  twined  the  path  in  shadow  hid 

89  82  79 

Here  an  extra  syllable  has  to  be  borrowed  by  the  third  foot  from 
the  last  and  even  then  it  is  shorter  than  the  others.  Evidently 
mechanical  scansion  will  not  give  feet  of  even  approximately  equal 
lengths.  But  if  freer  scansion  does  reveal  such  feet  the  question 
arises  how  much  irregularity  can  be  countenanced;  that  is.  where 
"regularity"  begins. 

One  experiment  made  upon  Subject  H,  who  can  sing,  throws  some 
light  on  this  question  in  so  far  as  it  reveals  correspondingly  large 
irregularities  in  the  duration  of  musical  notes.  The  results  of  recit- 
ing and  singing  the  same  words,  "Blow,  blow,  breathe  and  blow, 
Wind  of  the  western  sea,"  are  summarized  in  Table  XVII.  The 
times  are  given  for  the  syllables  as  read  and  as  sung;9  then  the 
proportional  time  the  notes  should  have  in  the  song,  and  lastly,  the 
time  of  the  syllables  as  read  increased  to  the  tempo  or  rate  at  which 
they  were  sung.  Both  reading  and  singing  have  a  different  tempo 
for  the  two  verses.  It  appears  that  in  this  case  at  any  rate,  the 
reading  while  regular  as  regards  "feet"  is  no  more  so  than  singing 
without  accompaniment,10  Certain  differences  are  noteworthy.  The 
reading  tends  more  to  equalize  the  corresponding  words  blow,  blow. 

9  The  subject  is  thoroughly  competent  to  sing  this  well-known  song  accept- 
ably and  he  said  that  the  apparatus  did  not  hamper  him. 

10  For  the  degree  of  regularity  to  be  expected  in  musical  performances  see 
Binet  and  Courtier,  L'Annee  psychologique,  1895. 


50  TIME    IN   ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

TABLE    XVI 

AVERAGES  OF  13  READINGS  BY  H  OF  Where  twined  the  path  in  shadow  hid 

a                    b'                     a        V                      b'        V  Foot  V                   Ratio      V 

Where         twined            43     6.9                46     5.2  89  3.9                 1.1     9.3 

the               path                18     6.5                64     6.1  82  4.!                3.6     8.3 

in                 shad               26  11.5                29     5.6  55  5.5                 1.1  14.8 

ow                hid                  24  11.5                81     7.0  105 

Verse  331  2.8 

TABLE    XVII 

AVERAGES  FOR  H,  10  CASES  READING  AND  20  CASES  SINGING,  Blow,  blow, 
breathe  and  blow,  Wind  of  the  western  sea 


Beading 
Time     V 

Time^V 

Measure 
Singing7     Reading8         Reading 
Time            Time         Time      V 

Measure 
Singing 
Time       V 

Blow 

113 

7.6'' 

173 

7.3 

174            189            113 

7.6 

173 

7.3 

blow 

116 

1.5 

188 

5.8 

175            194            116 

7.5 

188 

5.8 

breathe 

51 

14 

113 

7.7 

131             86 

and 

45 

6.7 

61 

11.0 

44             75             95 

5.7 

173 

5.5 

blow 

92 

5.0 

164 

10.0 

174           154             92 

5.0 

164 

10.0 

Verse 

416 

698 

Wind 

62  10.0 

86 

11.0 

of 

62 

5.0 

the 

27 

5.0 

25 

16.0 

89 

7.8 

170 

9.7 

wes 

38 

8.8 

113 

12.0 

tern 

31 

84 

46 

15.0 

70 

6.7 

158 

9.7 

sea 

199 

4.7 

176 

10.0 

176 

10.0 

ea   (2d  measure) 

112 

199 

112 

Verse 

358 

616 

The  two  words  breathe  and  are  sung  in  correct  time,  but  are  spoken 
too  fast.  The  same  is  true  of  the  two  syllables  of  western.  The" 
general  inference  to  be  drawn  from  this  table  is  that  the  lack  of  abso- 
lute equality  in  time  between  the  feet  does  not  mean  that  there  are  no 
feet,  but  rather  that  the  changes  due  to  introducing  meaning  and 
variety  into  the  material  tend  to  reduce  very  greatly  the  regularity. 
That  the  time  occupied  by  a  foot  is  only  in  part  dependent  upon 
the  number  of  consonants  involved  is  seen  in  Tables  VI.  to  IX.  These 
records  were  so  taken  as  to  avoid  interference  from  the  tendency  of 
the  reader  to  change  his  rate  of  reading  during  the  sitting.  The 
individual  differences  of  the  readers  are  so  large  that  it  is  not 
possible  to  say  what  the  effect  of  adding  any  one  consonant  will  be. 
^Evidently  it  will  not  be  great,  and  in  some  cases  the  time  is 
actually  shorter  when  the  consonant  group  is  more  complex.  The 
figures  of  Table  XIII.  again  give  an  opportunity  for  rough  com- 

7  Theoretical  time  for  the  notes  on  basis  of  total  time  of  verse. 

8  Reading  time  magnified  to  same  scale  as  singing  time. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  51 

parison.     The  large  individual  differences  undoubtedly  depend  in 
large  part  upon  the  way  in  which  terminal  r  was  pronounced. 

In  many  cases  the  verse  seems  to  be  divided  into  short 
phrases  rather  than  "feet"  in  the  ordinary  sense.  "Pease  por- 
ridge," Table  XIV.,  is  an  example.  Other  examples  are  "Break, 
break,"  Table  XV.;  see  also  Tables  XVIII.,  XIX.  These  phrases 
might  be  considered  as  the  rhythmic  elements  in  the  verse,  for  they 
are  fairly  uniform  in  length  while  the  feet  are  far  less  regular. 
Still  more  might  the  whole  verses  themselves  be  considered  the  units 
since  they  are  still  more  uniform  than  the  feet. 

TABLE    XVIII 

AVEEAGES  OF  35  READINGS  BY  H  OF  Each  purple  peak,  each  flinty  spire 
Was  bathed  in  floods  of  living  fire 

4  Feet    V 


a 

b' 

a 

V 

b' 

V 

Foot 

V 

Katio 

V 

2  Feet 

V 

Each 

pur 

46 

9.1 

22 

7.2 

68 

6.2 

.48 

15.3 

pie 

peak 

28 

8.9 

81 

6.7 

110 

4.9 

178 

44 

each 

flin 

35 

7.7 

31 

8.3 

66 

5.8 

.88 

12.0 

ty 

spire 

21 

7.5 

90 

7.3 

111 

6.8 

177 

5.0 

Was 

bathed 

42 

9.3 

46 

4.0 

88 

5.2 

1.13 

9.5 

in 

floods 

17 

12.0 

53 

6.6 

70 

5.2 

159 

4.0 

of  living 

fire 

223 

6.0 

355  3.9 

379  4.5 
TABLE    XIX 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H  OF  Double,  double,  toil  and  trouble, 
Fire  burn  and  caldron  bubble 

b  a'       V  b       V  Foot      V  Eatio      V  2  Feet        4  Feet 

.45     9.4 

.35  13.3  155 

1.4       9.0 

198  353 

1.8     17.7  160 

cal          dron        41     7.2  39     6.9  81     4.5         1.07  11.0 

bub        ble  17     4-4         148     Jt.l         165  246  406 

But  there  is  a  criterion  of  the  "foot,"  or  element,  provided  in 
the  absolute  time  of  the  nonsense  verse.  There  does  exist  in  that 
material  a  unit  of  very  definite  form  revealed  by  the  most  casual 
inspection  of  the  voice  record.  This  unit  has  rather  narrow  limits 
in  point  of  absolute  time  value  for  any  one  reader.  The  average 
value  of  none  of  the  first  three  feet  in  the  tetrameters  of  Subject  H, 
Table  VII.,  is  longer  than  .95  second  or  shorter  than  .85  second; 
and  so  for  the  other  readers. 

11  The  word  fire  seems  to  have  two  syllables  here. 


Dou 

ble 

23 

6.2 

51 

6.1 

73 

4-1 

dou 

ble 

21 

8.1 

61 

13.2 

81 

9.8 

toil 

and 

54 

6.4 

40 

9.8 

93 

6.6 

trou 

ble 

26 

11.3 

79 

7.4 

105 

5.7 

Fire 

?  n 

62 

7.9 

62 

7.9 

burn 

and 

62 

12.2 

35 

10.5 

98 

8.9 

52  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

Since  these  well-defined  units  seem  so  essential  to  free  spoken 
rhythms  like  the  nonsense  verse  we  are  justified  in  looking  for  them 
in  other  verse  as  well.  But  in  every  case  the  longer  phrases  of 
which  I  have  spoken  differ  from  the  "feet"  of  the  nonsense  verse 
in  the  very  fact  that  they  are  longer.  The  phrases  of  "pease  por- 
ridge," Table  XIV.,  for  instance,  are  about  twice  as  long  as  the 
longest  feet  of  the  nonsense  verse.  It  is  fair  to  say,  then,  that 
whatever  the  significance12  of  these  phrases  they  are  not  analogous 
to  the  '  *  feet, ' '  in  the  strict  sense,  which  appear  in  nonsense  material 
and  also  in  the  simplest  poetic  verse.  The  absolute  time  for  a  foot 
for  any  one  individual  is  determined  partly  by  the  rhythm  and 
partly  by  the  content,  as  can  be  seen  by  following  down  the  columns 
of  Table  XIII.  In  different  selections  of  actual  verse  the  feet 
occupy  times  approximating  the  time  of  a  foot  in  the  same  rhythm 
in  nonsense  verse.  The  minimum  is  above  half  a  second  and  the 
maximum  less  than  one  second. 

Closely  connected  with  the  matter  of  the  duration  of  the  feet  is 
that  of  the  rapidity  of  utterance  as  indicated  by  the  time  of  a 
whole  verse.  Here  we  find  very  great  individual  differences.  These 
come  out  most  strikingly  in  the  nonsense  material.  Table  VIII., 
for  example,  shows  Subject  F  going  through  identical  material  in 
only  two  thirds  of  the  time  occupied  by  Subject  H.  In  Table  XIII. 
the  rates  of  different  readers  are  shown  in  all  the  rhythms.  It  will 
be  seen  that  each  has  a  very  regular  characteristic  tempo  relative  to 
the  others,  F  being  fastest  and  H  slowest.  The  averages  at  the 
bottom  give  a  rough  measure  of  these  personal  peculiarities.13 

y    (c)  Ratio  of  Accented  to  Unaccented  Syllables 

The  second  place  in  which  regularity  is  to  be  expected  is  in  the 
ratio  between  the  accented  and  unaccented  parts  of  the  foot.  Here 
again  we  find  very  remarkable  regularity  in  the  case  of  the  nonsense 
verse  and  even  more  remarkable  irregularity  in  the  case  of  the 
natural  verse.  The  most  generally  significant  fact  is  that  each 
separate  verse  has  its  own  ratios  and  each  reader  his  own,  so  that 
while  these  ratios  remain  fairly  well  fixed  for  any  one  reading  they 

12 1  am  inclined  to  hold  that  such  clauses  are  to  be  interpreted  as  short 
verses.  The  length  of  a  line  on  the  printed  page  often  obscures  the  true  length 
of  the  verse,  two  actual  verses  being  printed  as  one,  or  one  divided  in  the  middle. 
In  the  absence  of  a  regular  rime  the  determination  of  the  true  verse  requires 
special  investigation. 

"This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  these  results  from  the  point  of  view  of 
individual  differences.  They  are  probably  parallel  effects  associated  with 
rapidity  of  respiration  and  heart  beat,  all  expressive  of  the  general  organic 
rate  of  the  individual. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  53 

have  no  constant  form.  Thus  in  Table  II.  the  ratios  for  different 
readers  range  from  .45  to  I.14 

In  Table  VIII.  on  the  other  hand  the  ratio  (still  remaining  fairly 
constant  for  one  set  of  material)  changes  from  2.3  to  3.5  with  a 
change  of  material  in  the  same  rhythm. 

These  facts  exclude  at  once  the  idea  that  there  is  any  fixed  rela- 
tion between  a  "long"  and  a  "short"  syllable.  Moreover  when  we 
turn  to  the  natural  verse  we  find  that  there  is  no  trace  of  such  a 
relation.  Table  XVIII.,  for  instance,  shows  two  exact  reversals  of 
normal  condition  in  iambic  verse.  The  "short"  syllable  is  here 
twice  as^lpng"7as  the  corresponding  "longn  syllable.  Was  and 

bathed  on  the  other  hand  are  almost  equal. Again,  in  Table  XIX., 

double  shows  the  accented  and  theoretically  "long"  syllable  less  than 
half  as  long  as  the  "short"  syllable.  It  is  needless  to  multiply  par- 
ticular instances ;  the  tables  are  full  of  them. 

Tables  VI.  to  IX.  show  the  results  of  an  experiment  which  is 
crucial  upon  this  point.  It  amounts  to  this;  when  the  character 
of  the  syllable  is  changed  in  any  given  rhythm  there  is  a  change  of 
ratio  of  the  parts.  In  Table  IX.tthe  effect  of  complicating  the 
long  syllable  in  iambic  rhythm15  is  to  lengthen  the  whole  foot  regu- 
larly. But  at  the  same  time  the  short  syllable  is  shortened  as  if 
there  were  a  tendency  to  make  it  compensate  for  the  greater  length 
of  the  other  syllable.  (  The  result  is  a  steady  increase  in  the  ratio  of 
the  parts  along  with  the  increase  in  total  length  of  the  foot.  Table 
VIII.  shows  the  same  thing,  save  that  the  compensation  is  really 
effective  in  the  lower  half  of  the  table  so  that  the  total  length  of 
the  foot  does  not  increase,  but  there  is  enough  decrease  in  the  first 
syllable  to  balance  the  increase  in  the  second,  and  the  ratio  mounts 
rapidly.  In  Tables  VI.  and  VII.  the  short  syllable  remains  fairly 
constant  and  changes  in  the  long  one  are  reflected  in  a  changed 
ratio.  Without  the  evidence  from  the  natural  verse  these  tables 

14  By  ratio  is  to  be  understood  the  figure  got  by  dividing  an  accented  by 
an  unaccented  syllable.     The  latter  is  then  always  unity  and  the  figure  given 
is  the  relative  length  of  the  accented  syllable;   this  figure  will  be  less  than 
unity  if  the  accented  syllable    (as  sometimes  happens)    is  not  so  long  as  the 
unaccented.     The  variations  given  with  the  ratios  are  per  centum  and  are  only 
to  be  used  in  comparing  different  ratios.     They  furnish  no  criterion  for  com- 
paring the  variability  of  ratios  and  of  separate  syllables  or  feet. 

15  Iambic  rhythm  offers  the  critical  case  for  this  phenomenon  because  the 
effect  is  seen  in  the  short  (first)   syllable  which  is  not  directly  affected  by  the 
changes  in  the  other  syllable.     If  trochaic  rhythm  were  taken  such  a  shorten- 
ing of  the  unaccented  syllable  in  response  to  a  lengthening  of  the  accented 
might  be  ascribed  to  a  change  in  the  length  of  the  pause  at  the  end  of  the  foot. 
In  the  case  of  iambic  the  pause  can  not  be  connected  in  any  way  with  the 
phenomenon. 


54:  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

offer  complete  proof  that  no  " strict  music"  theory  of  verse  will 
hold.  The  syllables  do  not  behave  like  the  notes  in  music.  On  the 
contrary  they  are  inversely  related ;  when  one  is  long  the  other  is 
short. 

A  change  in  the  rate  of  reading  does  not  seem  to  have  any  very 
regular  influence  on  the  ratio  of  the  syllables.  Table  VI.  shows 
the  changes  which  occur  when  a  subject  reads  the  same  material  on 
different  days.  The  differences  both  in  tempo  and  ratio  are  large 
compared  with  the  variation  within  either  of  the  series.  The  records 
of  pa  paf  in  Table  I.  may  also  be  compared  with  Tables  VII.,  VIII. 
and  IX.  taken  on  different  days.  The  changes  of  tempo,  as  indi- 
cated in  the  summary  below,  are  considerable  in  every  case  but  the 
ratios  show  only  a  very  slight  tendency  to  increase  as  the  rate 
becomes  slower. 

Subject  Time  of  Verse  Ratio 

H  340  2.1 

419  2.3 

F  247  2.3 

238  2.3 

B  370  2.5 

310  2.2 

Table  XX.  gives  the  result  of  a  deliberate  effort  to  change  from 
the  normal  rate  of  reading  to  a  faster  rate.  To  the  listener  this 
gives  a  general  impression  of  haste  and  the  esthetic  result  is  bad, 
nevertheless  the  reader  managed  to  give  more  than  thirty  repetitions 
with  an  average  variation  of  only  3  per  cent,  for  the  verse;  his 
performance  was  practically  as  uniform  at  the  rapid  rate  as  when 
reading  normally.  His  own  impression  was  that  the  saving  in  time 
was  made  at  the  cost  of  certain  slight  logical  pauses  in  the  verse. 

TABLE    XX 

THE  VERSE,  She  kept  with  care  her  beauties  rare,  READ  BY  R  30  TIMES  AT  A 

NORMAL  TEMPO,  AND  30  TIMES  IN  HASTENED  TEMPO 

a  b>  a       V  b'       V          Foot     V          Ratio      V         Verse      V 

She      kept 


with    care 
her       beau 


ties      rare       norm.       30  10.0         56     7.5         85     4-9  310     2.9 

240     3.1 


norm, 
hast. 

a 
44 
32 

V 
9.1 
10.0 

b' 
20 
18 

V 
4.9 
10.0 

Foot 
64 
49 

V 
6.4 

Ratio 
.47 
.56 

V 
9.9 
14.0 

norm, 
hast. 

40 
32 

3.3 
5.5 

58 
42 

7.5 
9.6 

98 
74 

4.7 
5.6 

1.4 
1.3 

7.2 
11.0 

norm. 

hast. 

37 
32 

7.7 

7.2 

23 
21 

6.7 
4.6 

60 
53 

5.8 
4.1 

.64 
.66 

9.6 
9.2 

norm, 
hast. 

30 
25 

10.0 
7.3 

56 

38 

7.5 
10.0 

85 
63 

4.9 
5.0 

EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  55 

The  results  show  that  this  introspection  is  only  partly  valid.  All 
the  syllables  are  shortened  and  the  ratios,  which  are  themselves 
notably  different  from  the  accepted  iambic  scheme,  remain  prac- 
tically the  same.  It  appears,  however,  that  the  greater  part  of  the 
shortening  comes  out  of  the  long  syllable  whether  it  is  accented  or 
not  and  whether  or  not  it  includes  a  pause.  Deliberately  changing 
the  tempo  does  not,  then,  serve  to  make  any  grave  difference  to  the 
rhythmic  structure  nor  to  affect  seriously  its  regularity.16  There 
is,  however,  a  slight  change  in  the  ratio  of  the  syllables  as  was  the 
case  when  different  vocal  complexes  were  tried  in  the  same  rhythm. 
In  view  of  the  great  variety  of  ratios  which  appear  between  the 
syllables  of  the  different  feet  in  even  the  most  simple  of  the  verses 
of  poetry  which  have  been  examined  it  is  remarkable  that  there  is 
such  great  regularity  between  the  different  readings  of  the  same 
verse.  In  other  words,  no  matter  how  irregular  the  verse  pattern, 
it  is  persistent,  maintaining  its  form  time  after  time.  It  is  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  this  regularity  is  partly  a  function  of  the 
natural  duration  of  the  individual  words  which  enter  into  the  verse. 
It  is  not  true,  however,  that  the  same  words  have  the  same  time 
value  in  different  verses. 

(d)  Rising  and  Falling  Rhythms 

A  discussion  of  the  ratio  of  the  syllables  in  a  foot  naturally 
leads  to  a  consideration  of  those  particular  time  relations  within  the 
foot  which  constitute  the  character  of  a  particular  rhythm.  And 
first  of  those ;  wherein  do  the  rising  rhythms  with  the  accent  on  the 
last  part  differ  from  the  falling  rhythms  with  the  accent  at  the 
beginning  of  the  foot?  Here  again  the  distinction  is  clearest  in 
nonsense  material  where  the  nature  of  the  subject-matter  exerts  the 
least  disturbing  influence. 

Table  I.  shows  rising,  Table  II.  falling  rhythm  with  the  same 
pair  of  syllables  differently  accented.  In  iambic  (rising)  rhythm 
the  length  of  the  long  syllables  is  between  two  and  three  times  that 
of  the  short  (unaccented)  syllable.  In  trochaic  (falling)  rhythm 
the  accented  syllable  is  shorter  than  the  unaccented  in  every  case 
but  one.  The  ratios  in  the  third  foot17  are,  for  the  different  sub- 
jects : 

Subject  W  H  F  B 

Iambic  2.9  2.1  2.3  2.5 

Trochaic  .46  1.04  .86  .87 

16  See  discussion  of  variabilities  below. 

17  This  foot  is  selected  as  typical  because  it  is  less  subject  to  the  disturbing 
effect  of  position.    Tne  first  foot  is  likely  to  be  irregular,  the  second  and  fourth 
are  followed  by  pauses. 


56  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

The  reader,  H,  who  has  the  least  difference  between  the  syllables 
in  one  rhythm  has  the  least  difference  in  the  other,  and  the  one 
who  has  the  greatest  difference  in  the  one,  W,  has  the  greatest  dif- 
ference in  the  other.  This  being  interpreted  means  that  the  second 
syllable  was  always  relatively  short  for  the  one  and  long  for  the 
other.  The  ratio  for  iambic  tends  to  be  greater  than  the  orthodox 
2:1  of  the  theorists,  while  the  ratio  for  the  trochaic  tends  more 
to  be  1:1.  The  individual  differences  are  so  great  as  to  cause  an 
overlapping  of  the  two  species.  Thus  the  ratio  of  W,  trochaic,  is 
practically  the  reciprocal  of  that  of  H,  iambic.  Consequently  it  is 
not  possible  to  draw  a  hard  and  fast  line  between  the  two  rhythms 
on  the  basis  of  the  time  relations  of  the  syllables  alone. 

The  absolute  times  of  the  third  foot  as  given  in  Tables  I.  and 
II.  are: 

Subject  W  H  F  B 

Iambic  77  73  52  73 

Trochaic  72  67  57  60 

The  tendency  to  acceleration  in  the  trochaic  rhythm  is  too  small 
to  be  significant.  Table  V.  shows  what  remarkable  results  can 
be  got  by  what  appears  to  be  a  very  insignificant  change  in  the 
rhythm.  The  introduction  of  a  catch  syllable  at  the  beginning  and 
the  cutting  off  of  the  final  unaccented  syllable  at  the  end  of  the 
verse  gives  a  new  tempo  and  new  set  of  ratios  to  the  whole  verse. 
The  time  for  verse  and  foot,  Table  XIII.,  is  less  for  this  form  than 
for  either  trochaic  or  iambic.  The  ratio  is  not  appreciably  changed 
by  coupling  the  second  accented  syllable  with  its  succeeding 
(trochaic)  or  preceding  (iambic)  syllable.  For  corresponding  third 
feet  the  ratios  are : 

Subject  W  H                         F  B 

Iambic  2.9  2.1  2.3  2.5 

Intermediate  form  1.05  .62                   .86  1.8 

Trochaic                          .46  1.04                   .86  .87 

For  F  the  rhythm  is  the  same  as  trochaic.  For  W  and  B  it  is 
intermediate  between  trochaic  and  iambic.  For  H  it  is  more 
trochaic  than  the  natural  trochee.  A  comparison  of  trochaic  and 
iambic  rhythms  in  actual  verse  is  not  easy,  the  chief  reason  being 
that  their  time  relations  are  too  much  alike.  ' '  The  boast  of  heraldy, ' ' 
Table  XXI.,  and  "The  stag  at  eve,"  Table  XL,  are  as  regular  as 
any  of  the  iambic  specimens.  Table  XXII.  gives  a  trochee  which 
may  be  said  to  be  more  trochaic  than  the  nonsense  type  because  in 


EXPERIMENTAL   RESULTS 


57 


TABLE    XXI 
AVERAGES  OF  15  READINGS  BY  H  OF  The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power 


a                b' 

a        V 

b'       V 

Foot     V 

Ratio       V 

The        boast 

17     10.6 

46     3.6 

63     34 

2.8     11.6 

of           her 

16       8.5 

45     5.6 

61     4.3 

2.9     13.1 

aldry 

73 

The        pomp 

18     104 

42     5.2 

60     4-7 

2.5     13.0 

of           power 

29       8.8 

92     5.2 

120     5.1 

Verse 

377     24 

TABLE    XXII 
AVERAGES  OF  12  READINGS  BY  H  OF  Sleep  the  sleep  that  knows  no  breaking 


a'               b 

a       V 

b          V 

Foot      V 

Ratio      V 

Sleep       the 
sleep        that 
knows      no 

50     2.9 
43     8.8 
49     5.0 

18     14.0 
19     11.0 

46       5.8 

67     4-5 
62     7.3 
94     2.6 

2.8     17.0 
2.3     11.0 
1.1       9.3 

brea         king 
Verse 

24     4-2 

150       8.7 

174 
397 

TABLE    XXIII 
AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  L  OF  Wha  will  be  a  traitor  knave,  etc. 


a               b                   a'         V 

b        V                  Foot 

V 

Ratio       V 

Wha         will 

68 

5.3 

be             a 

40 

10.0 

trai          tor               23     10.0 

19     13.0                 43 

84 

1.3     17.0 

knave 

55 

11.0 

Verse 

206 

Wha         can              35     14.0 

19     19.0                 54 

12.0 

1.8     19.0 

fill           a 

59 

6.0 

cow          ard's 

54 

7.6 

grave 

76 

14.0 

Verse 

243 

Wha        so               34     13.0 

35     10.0                 69 

54 

.97  19.0 

base         as                31       7.2 

15     15.0                 46 

^4 

2.1     14.0 

be            a 

38 

8.5 

slave 

59 

11.0 

Verse 

212 

Let           him             24     18.0 

38     10.0                 62 

11.0 

.62  14.0 

turn         and              38     10.0 

20       9.0                 58 

9.9 

1.9       9.0 

flee 

129 

13.0 

Verse 

249 

two  of  its  feet  the  ratio  of  the  syllables  is  more  extreme.  These  two 
feet  look  more  like  inverted  iambs.  Table  XXIII.  shows  great 
irregularities  in  respect  to  ratio  in  a  verse  which  was  selected  as 


58 


TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 


typically  trochaic.  Parts  of  this  record  could  not  be  deciphered 
with  certainty.  The  tempo  is  fast,  and  the  rhythm  complex,  with 
very  unequal  feet.  Tables  XVIII.  and  XIX.  constitute  final 
evidence  of  the  indistinguishableness  in  regard  to  ratios  of  iambs  and 
trochees.  In  the  former  those  feet  which  are  free  from  pauses  are 
better  trochees  than  iambs ;  in  the  latter  true  trochees  give  irregular 
results  which  would  look  quite  as  well  interpreted  as  iambs. 

The  confusion  of  these  two  rhythms  is  caused  by  the  fact  that 
accent  does  not  always  carry  with  it  an  increase  in  duration,  hence 
the  ratios  do  not  obey  the  accentual  schemes. 

In  Table  XXIV.  we  have  what  seems  to  be  a  specimen  of  the 
anomalous  rhythm  of  Table  VIII.  Its  tempo  is  somewhat  faster 

TABLE    XXIV 
TIME  AND  VARIATION  OF  SYLLABLES.    H,  10  readings. 


And 

cu 

ckoo 

buds 

of 

yel 

low 

hue 

Verse 

40 

19 

28 

54 

19 

22 

24 

80 

286 

14.0 

7.4 

5.4 

7.6 

8.8 

11.0 

14.0 

24.0 

Do 

paint 

the 

mea 

dows 

with 

de 

light     Pause 

Verse 

25 

35 

9 

22 

26 

25 

19 

46          100 

307 

8.9 

5.7 

10.0 

10.0 

9.2 

11.0 

6.8 

8.5          4.5 

TABLE    XXV 

TIME  AND  VARIATION  OF  SYLLABLES.     H,  10  readings.     Read  with  full  stop  at 

the  end. 
The        splen         dor          falls  on  cas  tie  walls  Verse 


9 
7.1 

And 

23 

14.2 


54 

7.9 

snow 
55 
9.3 


26 
6.4 

(y)18 


52 


sum 


4-7 


43 

26 

23 

110 

343 

7.5 

8.1 

13.6 

7.8 

mits 

old 

in 

story 

Verse 

59 

47 

19 

185 

414 

8.5 

44 

4^1 

5.4 

than  the  ordinary  iamb  of  Table  XXV.  but  except  for  the  unex- 
pected length  of  the  unaccented  initial  syllable  the  internal  structure 
shows  no  remarkable  peculiarities.  There  is  nothing  to  indicate 
whether  the  verse  should  be  treated  as  trochaic  or  iambic.  Both 
these  specimens  exemplify  the  chaotic  time  relations  of  verses  which 
are  quite  respectable  rhythmically. 

(e)  2-Syllable  and  3-Syllable  Rhythms 

The  number  of  syllables  in  a  foot  is  one  of  the  factors  which 
distinguishes    verse    rhythms.     The    characteristics    of    the    three- 
18  Can  not  be  separated  in  the  record  from  the  preceding  syllable. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  59 

syllable  type  are  analyzed  in  Tables  III.  and  IV.  In  respect  to  the 
time  value  of  the  foot  and  verse  there  is  no  marked  difference  be- 
tween iambic  (2-syllable)  and  anapaestic  (3-sy liable).  The  latter 
move  faster  for  two  of  the  readers  and  slower  for  the  other  two. 
Neither  do  the  trochaic  and  dactylic  forms  show  any  constant  dif- 
ference in  this  respect.  The  relation  of  the  ratios  is  complicated. 
Taking  the  point  of  view  first  that  either  of  the  short  syllables  in 
3-syllable  rhythm  is  analogous  to  the  short  syllable  in  2-syllable 
rhythm  we  find  the  ratio  between  accented  and  unaccented  much 
larger  in  anapaestic  than  in  iambic.  As  a  rule  this  means  that  the 
short  syllable  is  much  shorter  in  the  former  case  while  the  long  one 
is  not  correspondingly  shorter.  Dactylic  rhythm  yields  a  ratio 
much  smaller  than  trochaic,  due  to  the  fact  that  the  accented  syllable 
is  much  shorter  in  the  dactyl. 

Now  consider  for  a  moment  the  two  short  syllables  together  as 
equivalent  to  the  corresponding  part  in  the  2-syllable  rhythm.  The 
anapaest  then  shows  a  ratio  not  unlike  the  iamb  but  smaller,  for  the 
two  shorts  of  the  anapaest  are  longer  than  the  one  of  the  iamb  and 
its  long  is  shorter.  The  dactyls  yield  a  ratio  almost  exactly  the  same 
as  that  of  their  analog  the  trochee,  for  all  of  the  readers  except  H. 
His  ratios  for  the  dactyl  and  for  the  trochee  with  an  extra  syllable, 
Table  V.,  are  the  same  practically,  both  differing  from  his  simple 
trochee  in  the  sense  that  the  latter  departs  from  the  regular  trochaic 
type  of  the  other  readers.  That  is,  his  trochee  is  the  exception,  not 
his  dactyl.  Considered  in  this  way,  no  very  clear  line  of  distinc- 
tion appears  even  in  the  nonsense  verse  between  2-syllable  and 
3-syllable  rhythms.19 

The  distinction  between  the  rising  and  falling  rhythms  is  not 
so  clear  in  the  3-syllable  type  as  it  is  in  the  2-syllable  type.  The 
rate  is  slightly  faster  in  the  dactyls  than  in  the  anapaests.20  The 
relation  of  the  two  short  syllables  is  the  same  for  dactyls  as  for 
anapaests,  the  first  being  shorter  whether  accented  or  not.  The  last 
syllable  is  only  very  slightly  longer  when  accented,  consequently  the 
relation  between  it  and  the  initial  syllable  is  practically  the  same 
for  rising  or  falling  rhythm.  The  ratio  of  the  last  syllable  to  the 
sum  of  the  first  two  in  the  third  foot  is : 

19  An  inspection  of  the  voice  records  will  bring  out  more  clearly  than  the 
figures  the  fact  that  the  two  short  members  of  the  3-syllable  combination  are  so 
closely  connected  as  to  be  almost  inseparable  while  they  are  at  the  same  time 
well  marked  off  from  the  rest  of  the  foot. 

20  For  subject  H  the  verse  is  somewhat  slower  in  the  dactyl,  but  the  foot 
only  very  slightly  so. 


60  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

Subject  W  H  F  B 

Dactyl  2  1.5  1.2  1.2 

Anapaest  1.8  1.6  1.5  1.6 

These  particular  differences  exaggerate  the  general  argument  of  the 
tables  and  still  they  are  not  sufficient  to  be  significant.  Neither  in 
regard  to  tempo  nor  ratio  are  dactyls  clearly  distinguishable  from 
anapaests.  The  distinction  must  lie  outside  of  the  time  relations  of 
the  elements  in  the  verse. 

The  examination  of  the  question  in  the  case  of  actual  verse  is 
made  very  difficult  by  the  disputes  which  immediately  arise  as  to 
what  verse  is  to  be  read  as  dactylic  and  what  as  anapaestic.  On 
this  account  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  construe  the  feet  of  cer- 
tain of  the  verses.  In  other  cases  the  form  is  sufficiently  well  de- 
termined to  warrant  an  interpretation.  The  distinction  between  the 
2-syllable  and  the  3-syllable  feet  of  the  same,  rising  or  falling, 
rhythm  is  one  which  is  easier  to  draw.  Table  XXVI.  presents  a 
case  where  the  comparison  is  made  easy  by  the  occurrence  of  the 
same  words  at  the  beginning  of  the  two  verses.  The  dactyl  departs 

TABLE    XXVI 

COMPARISON  OF  DACTYLS  WITH  TROCHEES.     H,  15  readings;  with  full  stop  at 

the  end. 

Dactyls  Time       V  Trochees  Time       V 

High  52  10.1  High                  48       8.0 

u-  21  10.0  u-                       20       8.7 

pon  29       6.0  pon  22       6.4 

High-  35       9.1  a  18       5.8 

lands  62       6.7  gol  32       6.8 

and  18       8.5  den  26       6.7 

low  43       4.5  throne  160       7.8 

u-  20       9.0 

pon  41       8.1 

Tay  125       4-5 

Verse  446  326 

from  the  standard  of  the  nonsense  verse  in  that  the  accented 
syllable  is  comparatively  long,  while  the  final  unaccented  syllable 
is  not  proportionally  so  long.  The  trochee  is  not  typical  in  that  its 
first  syllable  is  too  long  but  after  that  the  approximately  equal 
length  of  the  syllables  is  typical.  The  significant  difference  between 
the  dactyl  and  the  trochee  lies  in  the  greater  length  of  the  syllable 
pon  in  the  former.  This  is  evidently  due  to  the  pause  which  follows. 
That  syllable  in  the  trochee  is  initial  in  the  foot  and  even  with  a 
very  free  reading  bears  an  accent.  The  presence  of  this  accent  does 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS 


61 


not,  however,  make  it  as  long  as  the  corresponding  weak  syllable  at 
the  end  of  the  dactyl. 

Table  XV.  shows  at  least  three  anapaBsts  which  approximate  the 
type  given  by  the  nonsense  verse.  The  combination  "Will  never 
come  back"  can  be  scanned  by  the  reader  to  suit  himself;  the  point 
of  chief  interest  is  that  the  strongly  accented  syllable  ne  is  very 
short  in  time,  being  a  little  over  one  third  as  long  as  the  preceding 
unaccented  will.  This  verse  read  as  iambs  (the  two  unaccented 
syllables  counting  as  one)  is  quite  as  regular  as  it  is  taken  any  other 
way  and  quite  as  near  the  ordinary  iamb  as  is,  for  instance,  "I  come 
from  haunts,"  Table  X. 

TABLE    XXVII 

AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H 


Verse 
297 


Why 

then 

comes 

in 

Half  verse 

34 

37 

31 

36 

137 

8.9 

4.6 

7.7 

7.2 

2.3 

the 

sweet 

of 

the 

year 

11 

32 

11 

15 

92 

11.7 

8.5 

12.6 

13.2 

8.0 

For 

the 

red 

blood 

reigns 

Half  verse 

22 

8 

44 

29 

62 

165 

10.3 

2.5 

4.8 

5.7 

7.9 

3.0 

in 

the 

win- 

ter's 

pale 

13 

4 

20 

41 

157 

15.2 

13.0 

9.0 

3.7 

5.8 

Verse 
400 


Table  XXVII.  presents  a  mixed  type,  but  too  much  disturbed 
by  pauses  to  show  the  internal  structure.  Such  a  rhythm  as  that  in 
Table  XXVIII.  is  not  consistent  with  any  system  of  proportion  be- 
tween the  syllables.  As  this  rhythm  does  not  show  definite  feet 
under  any  construction  it  remains  a  puzzle.  Similar  difficulties 
appear  in  Tables  XXIX.  and  XXX.,  yet  those  verses  were  read  very 
rhythmically  by  the  subject.  The  lines  of  which  the  analysis  is 
given  in  Table  XXXI.  are  supposed  to  be  regularly  dactylic. 
Scanned  thus  they  give  fairly  uniform  feet  in  rather  slow  time. 
Another  and  freer  scansion  also  gives  about  the  same  regularity. 
The  difficulty  with  the  conventional  scansion  is  that  it  makes  the 
final  syllable  of  several  feet  very  short;  a  condition  which  was  not 
found  in  any  of  the  nonsense  rhythms.  The  cause  of  the  length 
of  the  final  syllable  in  all  the  rhythms  seems  to  be  the  presence  in  it 
of  a  pause  at  the  end  of  the  foot.  The  absence  of  a  long  syllable, 
i.  e.,  of  the  sign  of  pause,  argues  that  the  foot  does  not  really  end 


62 


TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 


TABLE    XXVIII 
AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H 


I 

stood 

on 

the 

bridge 

at            mid         night 

Verse 

25 

27 

27 

16 

28 

17             25             76 

241 

15.0 

94            7.5           5.8 

3.9 

14.0          11.0            7.3 

As 

the 

clocks        were 

strik 

ing                     the  hour 

Verse 

17 

17 

34 

33 

32 

23                           129 

285 

12.0 

13.0 

15. 

o       14.0 

6.5 

13.0                           6.7 

And 

the 

moon         rose 

o'er 

the             ci             ty 

Verse 

18 

12 

37 

34 

36 

15             18             59 

229 

13.0 

18.0 

9.0         10.0 

7.0 

9.5            8.5         16.0 

Be 

hind 

the 

dark       church 

tower 

Verse 

11 

39 

15 

37 

44 

184 

330 

10.0 

8.0 

3.2            7.1 

6.1 

5.2 

TABLE 

XXIX 

._. 

AVERAGES 

OF   10 

READINGS  BY  H 

Sun 

set 

and 

eve       ning 

star 

Verse 

46 

48 

20 

25          24 

105 

268 

9.8 

8.7 

8.0 

12.0       13.0 

7.6 

And 

one 

clear 

call        for 

me 

, 

Verse 

18 

54 

48 

47          24 

91 

282 

12.0 

8.2 

54 

4.3        8.3 

4.5 

And 

may 

there 

be          no 

moa 

ning        of         the        bar 

Verse 

20 

31 

25 

19          28 

28 

19          17          20          64 

271 

5.4 

13.0 

5.8 

11.0        5.6 

7.8 

8.8      15.0        3.9      16.0 

When 

I 

put 

out         to 

sea 

Verse 

24 

32 

15 

37          15 

180 

303 

7.9 

8.6 

11.0 

8.6        8.1 

4.0 

TABLE 

XXX 

AVERAGES 

OF   10 

READINGS  BY  H 

The 

day 

is 

done 

and 

the          dark         ness 

Verse 

18 

24 

35 

73 

20 

17             31             47 

265 

5.1 

6.3 

8. 

4           5.5 

8.0 

4.1            4.9            7.2 

Falls 

(from  the) 

wings           (of  the) 

night          Pause 

Verse 

H 

20 

50 

22 

57                138 

338 

5,7 

8.6 

5.6 

12.0 

5.1                 6.2 

EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS 


63 


£».  ~5fr-  CO  OO 

^     90  -^  00 

+  05  <*  O 

0  O  00  00 


IO 

CO 


90 


hj 


g      °  ^     ,-H     ^H             .-H     CO     CO     <N 

^H         S5 

M     g 

x    9 

x    w 

(U 

r£i       ^ 

-2  .§ 

1       r~l 

pq      fe  >  "^  ^  °.  ^        °°  ^  *": 

H         02 
y     Q  O     >O     CO     C^.              r-H     CD     O5 
£j             CO     C^     CO      ^O                CO     P-H      rH 

ll 

fl 

1 

05 
02       QJ 

<j 

H 

O^^O            ©0^,9010 

«      1 

^  ©0    <=>    00    'O            ^    >i    ^o'    2^ 

^     +J 

•v,  O     CC     (M    fH             05C005IT- 
WCO"*COCO            (MCOi-HO 

~^$ 

(M 

<u   — 

rC        O2 

|l 

«,  2  2  1  fi«| 

4->    -t-»     c3           <3     O     cS    -M 

7l 
M 

?      0> 

0      ^ 

£       03                          g 

M     <3J 

<u   ^    S    **           ^    S 

4 

64  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

in  this  syllable.  In  no  case  has  a  verse  of  poetry  been  found  in 
triple  rhythm  with  the  initial  syllable  accented  and  short,  the  last 
unaccented  and  long;  and  as  this  is  the  normal  form  of  the  simple 
spoken  dactyl,  we  have  to  conclude  that  none  of  the  verses  studied 
are  true  dactyls  according  to  this  standard.  No  basis  whatever  ap- 
pears for  distinguishing  dactyls  from  anapaests. 

(/)  Regularity  of  Feet  and  Syllables 

Two  purposes  are  served  by  measuring  a  large  number  of  non- 
sense syllables.  One  to  obtain  the  type  form  of  certain  spoken 
rhythms  as  regards  their  true  structure  independent  of  the  influence 
of  the  verbal  and  ideational  content  of  the  verse.  The  other  end, 
and  the  one  which  made  imperative  the  accumulation  of  a  large 
number  of  measurements  of  the  same  rhythm,  was  to  secure 
empirical  data  with  regard  to  the  variability  of  the  feet  and  their 
constituent  parts.  The  amount  which  such  nonsense  syllables  vary, 
may  be  considered  as  the  amount  of  the  variation  of  enunication- 
when  the  rhythm  is  as  regular  as  possible.  The  variations  found  in 
ordinary  verse  can  then  be  compared  with  these  as  a  standard  and 
we  shall  be  able  to  state  in  what  respects  the  ordinary  verse  is  more 
irregular  than  the  necessities  of  verbal  utterance  in  the  prescribed 
rhythm  compel. 

Theoretically  such  a  determination  of  a  standard  of  variability 
should  rest  upon  a  very  large  number  of  single  measurements.  But 
the  nature  of  our  material  precludes  the  use  of  more  measurements 
than  can  be  got  from  a  subject  at  a  single  sitting  and  while  his 
tempo  is  fairly  constant.  A  change  of  tempo,  of  course,  affects 
the  homogeneity  of  the  group  of  figures  and  thereby  produces  a  very 
considerable  apparent  increase  in  the  variability  of  the  series.  The 
number  of  measurements  therefore  in  a  series  is  determined  by  the 
number  of  repetitions  of  the  verse  which  could  be  made  by  the 
subject  before  his  rate  of  reading  was  appreciably  slowed  down  or 
accelerated  by  fatigue  or  impatience ;  and  the  actual  number  secured 
depends  largely  on  the  original  rate  of  the  reader  and  the  length 
of  the  verse.  Slow  reading  or  long  verses  yield  fewer  reliable  cases. 

Throughout  the  tables  I  have  taken  the  variability  in  terms  of 
the  mean  variation  per  cent,  of  the  average  value  of  the  quantity. 
This  procedure  is  open  to  serious  objection,22  and  yet  it  is  the  only 
course  which  is  supported  by  common  sense.  To  take  the  absolute 
amount  of  the  variation  affords  no  way  of  comparing  the  variability 
of  one  series  with  that  of  another;  yet  that  is  precisely  what  we 

22 Thorndike,  "Empirical  Studies  in  the  Theory  of  Measurement,"  p.  9, 
these  Archives,  No.  3,  1907. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  65 

want  to  do  with  the  variability  when  we  get  it.  The  variation  pro- 
portional to  the  amount  of  the  quantity  does  afford  a  basis  of  com- 
parison between  quantities  and  is  the  figure  which  is  comprehensible 
and  in  general  use.  No  other  measure  of  variability  is  obtained  so 
directly  and  no  other  conveys  any  direct  information  at  all.  This 
measure  must  be  considered  the  experimental  datum  and  if  it  mis- 
represents the  facts  or  leads  to  inconsistencies  it  must  be  corrected 

TABLE    XXXII 

VARIATION  OF  FOOT  AND  CONSTITUENT  SYLLABLES.    Under  V  the  mv.  per  cent. 

of  the  foot.     Under  -\/  the  square  root  of  the  sum  of  the  squares  of 

variations  of  the  constituent  syllables  reduced  to  per  cent. 


1st  Foot 

2d  Foot 

3d  Foot 

Subject  W 

V 

y— 

V 

V~ 

V 

y~ 

Pa  pa' 

7.1 

6.4 

7.0 

5.9 

7.1 

6.0 

Pa'  pa 

4.9 

4.7 

4.8 

4.4 

5.4 

5.0 

Oh  pa'  pa 

4.5 

4.0 

5.2 

4.2 

4.8 

4.1 

Average 

5.5 

5.0 

5.7 

3.8 

5.8 

5.0 

Subject  H 

" 

Pa  pa' 

3.8 

3.5 

3.8 

4.1 

3.2 

3.5 

Pa  pa'r 

2.9 

3.2 

2.8 

3.0 

3.2 

3.4 

Pa  pa'rs 

2.1 

2.7 

2.4 

2.7 

2.7 

2.4 

Pa  pa'rst 

4.3 

3.7 

2.8 

3.1 

3.5 

3.5 

Pa'  pa 

4.2 

3.8 

3.2 

3.0 

4.4 

3.7 

Oh  pa'  pa 

4.2 

4.7 

3.9 

4.6 

3.5 

4.7 

Average 

3.6 

3.6 

3.1 

3.4 

3.4 

3.5 

Subject  F 

Pa  pa' 

4.4 

4.3 

4.9 

4.4 

6.4 

4.9 

Pa  pa' 

4.7 

4.9 

6.1 

5.7 

5.2 

4.9 

Pa  pa'r 

5.0 

5.0 

5.5 

4.6 

4.7 

4.6 

Pa  pa'rs 

7.1 

7.3 

9.1 

8.1 

7.4 

6.7 

Pa  pa'rst 

6.8 

6.2 

5.8 

5.5 

6.7 

5.8 

Pa'  pa 

3.8 

4.1 

4.0 

4.4 

2.9 

3.6 

Oh  pa'  pa 

4.5 

5.3 

4.7 

5.7 

5.2 

5.4 

Average 

5.2 

5.3 

5.7 

5.5 

5.5 

5.1 

Subject  B 

Pa  pa' 

3.5 

3.8 

4.3 

3.7 

3.5 

3.8 

Pa  pa' 

4.8 

5.0 

4.2 

4.0 

5.1 

5.1 

Pa  pa'r 

3.2 

3.9 

3.7 

3.6 

3.0 

3.3 

Pa  pa'rs 

4.2 

5.1 

3.7 

4.2 

3.4 

3.9 

Pa  pa'rst 

6.4 

6.1 

6.5 

6.0 

5.5 

5.7 

Pa'  pa 

4.8 

4.9 

5.4 

5.1 

5.1 

5.4 

Oh  pa'  pa 

4.7 

5.6 

4.8 

6.9 

3.5 

4.7 

Average  4.5     4.9  4.7     4.8  4.2     4.6 


66  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

subsequently.23  So  measured  the  variability  of  short  syllables  is 
found,  throughout  the  tables  of  nonsense  verse,  almost  without  ex- 
ception, greater  than  that  of  the  corresponding  long  syllables.  The 
long  syllable  being  terminal  in  the  verse  and  including  a  more  or 
less  conspicuous  "pause"  or  silence  might  reasonably  be  the  more 
irregular  but  is  not.  When  the  short  syllable  is  stressed  it  does  not 
lose  its  excess  of  variability,  unless  it  also  gains  in  duration. 

Since  speech  sounds  are  essentially  movements  there  is  some 
reason  for  assuming  that  they  should  be  subjected  to  the  correction 
proposed  by  Fullerton  and  Cattell,24  that  is,  that  each  variation  be 
divided  by  the  square  root  of  the  corresponding  quantity.  But 
there  is  no  apparent  reason  why  one  syllable  should  be  treated  as  a 
multiple  of  other  shorter  ones,  and  I  see  no  reason  for  obliterating 
by  this  procedure  a  result  which  may  be  highly  significant.  For 
purposes  of  comparison  the  feet  may  be  considered  as  having,  as 
units,  a  variation  of  their  own.  But  considered  as  made  up  of 
syllables  each  of  which  may  vary  independently  the  feet  will  be 
expected  to  vary  as  the  square  root  of  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the 
variations  of  the  constituent  syllables.  Table  XXXII.  shows  that 
such  is  the  case  within  limits  set  by  the  number  of  cases  considered. 
The  conclusion  then  is  that  the  syllables  do  vary  independently  and 
that  the  feet  are  really  no  more  regular  than  the  syllables.  WheFher 
there  is  a  tendency  for  the  two  parts  of  a  disyllabic  foot  to  com- 
pensate, the  second  being  longer  if  the  first  is  shorter  and  vice  versa 
should  be  determined  by  the  correlation  of  the  two  series  of  elements. 
But  the  constant  changes  in  the  time  of  reading  the  whole  line 
generally  occasion  such  a  large  apparent  positive  correlation  that  the 
true  correlation  is  covered  up.  If  there  were  any  such  tendency 
toward  compensation  it  would  make  itself  felt  in  Table  XXXII. 
Subject  W  does  show  feet  more  regular  than  a  chance  combination 
of  the  syllables  would  warrant,  and  there  are  a  few  other  cases  of 
the  same  sort.  But  on  the  whole  as  stated  above,  no  marked 
tendency  toward  compensation  appears. 

One  series  of  one  hundred  verses  was  taken  with  the  special 
object  of  determining  the  relative  variability  of  the  syllables  and 

23 1  do  not  believe,  however,  that  such  correction  is  ever  necessary.  It 
seems  to  me  that  what  we  mean  by  variability  is  proportional  variation,  and  if 
a  large  quantity,  for  instance  varies  less,  proportionally  than  a  small  one,  it  is 
really  less  variable.  Apparent  inconsistencies  arise  either  from  arbitrary 
classification  into  genera  which  are  not  homogeneous  or  from  arbitrary  methods 
of  correlation. 

24 "  On  the  Perception  of  Small  Differences,"  p.  153,  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania, Philosophical  Series,  No.  2,  1892. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  67 

feet,  Table  XXXIII.  This  particular  reader  was  able. to  keep  up  a 
very  constant  rate  of  reading  so  that  the  disturbing  correlation 
due  to  change  of  tempo  is  not  prominent.  The  averages  for  the  first 
half  of  the  series  were  almost  identical  in  every  case  with  those  of 
the  second  half.  The  variations  themselves  are  small.  According 
to  the  standard  applied  in  the  other  cases  there  must  be  compensa- 
tion between  the  syllables  of  the  foot  since  its  actual  variation  is 
less  than  the  square  root  of  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the  variations 

TABLE    XXXIII 

THE  VARIATION  OF  THE  FOOT  AND  OF  THE  COMPONENT  SYLLABLES  IN  THE  3o 

FOOT  OF  THE  ANAPESTIC  TETRAMETER,  Tadadee,  etc.,  TOGETHER  WITH  THE 

CORRELATION  BETWEEN  THE  SEPARATE  SYLLABLES.     100  readings  by  R. 

ta  da  tada  tadaP  dee    tadadee  tadadee^ 

Average  time                                        19  21  40  34         74 

Mean  variation    (AD)                            .96  .96  1.15  1.35  1.78      1.98      2.24 

mv.  per  cent.                                         5.1  4.6  2.9  3.3  5.2        2.7        3.0 

Standard  (square  root)  deviation      1.29  1.23  1.60  1.78  2.14      2.34      2.32 

ta,  da  ta,  dee  da,  dee          tada,  dee 

Pearson  coefficient  of  correlation  —  .21  —  .28  +  -03  —  .28 

of  its  syllables.  This  conclusion  is  supported  by  the  application  of 
the  Pearson  coefficient  of  correlation.  The  first  and  second,  first 
and  third,  and  the  sum  of  the  first  two  syllables  and  the  third,  show 
a  definite  inverse  correlation.  That  is,  when  one  is  short  the  other 
is  long.  The  absence  of  correlation  between  the  second  and  third 
syllables  is  not  important.  With  regard  to  the  constancy  of  the 
ratio  of  the  syllables  the  other  nonsense  verses  show  negative  results. 
There  is  no  sign  of  positive  correlation.  But  in  this  favorable  case 
the  results  are  conclusive  on  this  point.  The  foot  is  the  regular 
thing  and  the  ratio  is  sacrificed  to  preserving  its  regularity. 

For  practical  purposes  of  comparison  the  variability  of  the  ratio 
between  the  syllables  of  a  foot  is  a  valuable  item ;  the  more  constant 
the  internal  structure  the  lower  this  variability  will  be.  '  No  attempt 
has  been  made,  however,  to  compare  the  variability  of  the  feet  in 
respect  to  their  length  with  their  variability  in  internal  proportion. ) 
The  length  might  vary  greatly  without  affecting  the  ratio.  That  it 
does  not  happen  so  means  that  ratio  and  length  are  both  variable 
but  does  not  indicate  that  either  is  more  so  than  the  other.  In  the 
verses  of  poetry  the  number  of  cases  is  not  sufficient  to  warrant 
exact  inferences,  but  the  variability  of  the  foot  is  less  in  nearly 
every  case  than  that  of  the  separate  syllables. 

25  The  square  root  of  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the  variations  of  the  com- 
ponent parts. 


68  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

TABLE    XXXIV 
AVERAGES  OF  10  READINGS  BY  H 


And 

he 

dan 

ces, 

and 

he 

yells; 

28 

20 

31 

25 

18 

23 

100 

11.0 

12.0 

6.9 

12.0 

17.0 

13.0 

10.0 

Kee 

ping 

time, 

time, 

time, 

19 

26 

78 

79 

110 

13.0 

10.0 

6.3 

6.2 

10.0 

In 

a 

sort 

of 

Run 

ic 

rhyme, 

13 

12 

29 

12 

26 

21 

99 

12.0 

16.0 

6.5 

17.0 

6.3 

5.4 

15.0 

To 

the 

poe 

an 

of 

the 

bells— 

12 

19 

18 

15 

14 

19 

98 

11.0 

16.0 

15.0 

17.0 

14.0 

13.0 

15.0 

Of 

the 

bells: 

17 

20 

125 

14.0 

10.0 

12.0 

Kee 

ping 

time, 

time, 

time, 

17 

26 

78 

78 

109 

14.0 

6.1 

4.9 

7.0 

5.1 

In 

a 

sort 

of 

Run 

ic 

rhyme, 

12 

11 

32 

14 

23 

22 

98 

18.0 

13.0 

10.0 

14.0 

13.0 

10.0 

14.0 

To 

the 

throb 

bing 

of 

the 

bells— 

12 

17 

29 

18 

14 

19 

133 

7.5 

13.0 

5.5 

7.5 

15.0 

11.0 

10.0 

To 

the 

tol 

ling 

of 

the 

bells, 

12 

18 

25 

17 

15 

20 

103 

16.0 

9.4 

13.0 

13.0 

11.0 

5.1 

7.8 

Of 

the 

bells, 

bells, 

bells, 

bells, 

16 

21 

77 

79 

75 

113 

Jtf.0 

11.0 

7.6 

*.7 

3.7 

4.2 

Bells, 

bells, 

bells— 

79 

74 

112 

7.2 

4.6 

6.2 

To 

the 

moa 

ning 

and 

the       groa        ning         of          the 

13 

14 

34 

17 

15 

16 

31            15           16           18 

10.0 

23.0 

9.5 

13.0 

6.8 

6.3 

11.0        11.0        13.0          8.7 

bells. 


EXPERIMENTAL    RESULTS  69 

Iambic  rhythm,  Table  I.,  is  more  regular  than  trochaic  with  re- 
spect to  length  of  foot  and  syllable  for  only  two  of  the  four  readers. 
The  other  two  read  trochaic  more  regularly  in  this  respect.  With 
respect  to  ratio  neither  of  these  rhythms  is  more  regular  than  the 
other.  Neither  do  rising  and  falling  3-syllable  verses,  Tables  III. 
and  IV.,  show  any  differences  in  stability  in  time  or  proportion. 
The  3-syllable  type  is  as  regular  in  length  of  foot  as  the  2-syllable 
but  its  separate  syllables  are  more  variable.  A  fair  comparison  of 
ratios  is  not  feasible,  but  if  the  3-syllable  form  be  considered  as  a 
more  complex  2-syllable  verse  its  ratios  are  very  nearly  as  stable  as 
those  of  the  simpler  forms.  On  the  whole  all  the  rhythms  attain 
about  the  same  degree  of  stability. 

The  amount  of  variability  in  time  and  ratio  shown  by  the  non- 
sense verse  being  fairly  constant  and  being  based  on  a  fairly  large 
number  of  observations  establishes  a  norm  for  spoken  rhythms  in 
general.  Meaningful  verse  shows  higher  variability.  This  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  greater  difficulty  of  enunciation  and  to  interference 
from  the  side  of  the  intellectual  content  of  the  line ;  and,  in  part,  to 
an  increase  of  the  error  of  reading  the  record  due  to  its  greater 
complexity. 

Syllables,  feet  and  ratios  all  vary  more  in  poetry  than  in  non- 
sense verse.  The  comparison  can  not  be  made  statistically  but  a 
comparison  of  the  variation  in  Table  XV.  with  those  from  the  same 
reader,  H,  in  Table  I.,  shows  that  the  excess  of  the  former,  item  by 
item,  is  not  great.  Such  a  comparison  of  any  other  of  the  analyzed 
verses  with  its  corresponding  type  in  the  schematic  verses  will  show 
a  similar  condition.  Poetic  verses  thus  compared  with  empty 
spoken  rhythms  are  tolerably  regular  in  every  feature.  No  matter 
how  irregular  the  verse  pattern  itself,  it  is  adhered  to  with  great 
fidelity  time  after  time  in  repetition,  as  is  seen  in  Table  XXXIV. 
The  structural  irregularity  of  the  verse  is  not  therefore  a  chance 
affair.  If  it  were,  the  temporal  arrangement  would  probably  be 
different  with  each  repetition.  As  the  pattern  becomes  more  com- 
plex the  variability  increases  but  it  never  exceeds  an  amount  which 
is  surprisingly  low  if  one  considers  the  enormous  complexity  of  the 
motor  performance  involved. 

In  poetic  verse  there  is  no  evidence  that  the  presence  of  accent 
reduces  variability,  but  it  is  true  here  as  in  nonsense  verse  that  short 
syllables  are  generally  the  more  variable.  The  introduction  of 
pauses  due  to  the  meaning  does  not  add  appreciably  to  the  variability 
of  those  syllables  with  which  they  are  connected. 


CHAPTER   VII 
SIGNIFICANCE  OF  RESULTS  FOR  METRICAL  THEORY 

THERE  are  six  theories  of  English  verse  structure  which  can  be 
clearly  distingiushecL 

1.  There  is  the  classical  or  quantitative  theory  which  neglects 
accent  and  treats  the  verse  as  made  up  of  syllables  long  and  short, 
the  former  being  theoretically  twice  as  long  in  time  as  the  latter. 

2.  The  strict  time  theory,  which  makes  the  syllables  correspond  to 
notes  in  music,  the  feet  being  treated  as  measures. 

3.  The  conventional  English  scansion  which  makes  the  rhythm 
depend    on   the    regular   succession    of    accented    and    unaccented 
syllables  according  to  a  numerical  scheme  but  without  regard  to 
time  or  quantity. 

4.  The  beat  theory  of  Coleridge  which  requires  a  certain  number 
of  accents  to  every  line  but  disregards  both  the  time  and  the  number 
of  syllables  intervening  between  those  accents.     In  this  theory  the 
accent  may  fall  on  a  syllable  which  is  either  long  or  short  in  time. 

5.  The  "section"  or  "centroid"  system  in  which  an  accent  is 
treated  as  a  point  of  maximum  stress  in  a  short  phrase. 

6.  The  interval  of  time  between  two  successive  beats  is  held  to  be 
constant  and  the  form  of  the  rhythm  is  determined  by  the  number 
of  intervening  syllables. 

Without  hesitation  we  can  dismiss  some  of  these  theories.  The 
measurements  of  actual  verses  show  nothing  corresponding  to  the 
long  and  short  syllables  of  the  classical  scheme.  To  be  sure,  some 
syllables  are  long  and  some  short,  but  there  are  all  gradations 
between  and  none  of  the  verses  which  have  been  examined  shows 
any  systematic  arrangement  of  the  longer  and  shorter  elements. 
Table  XXI.  illustrates  this  point  no  better  than  many  of  the  others. 
Here  the  second  line  instead  of  reading  as  it  should  according  to 
quantity : 

Short,  long  short  short,  long  short  short,  long  short  short,  long; 
reads 

Short,  long  long  long,  long  short  long,  short  short  long,  long. 

The  analogy  between  verse  and  music  has  been  shown  to  fail  in 
both  its  essential  features.  Highly  rhythmical  verse  if  made  up  of 
sensible  words  can  not  be  divided  into  feet  of  equal  length  to 
correspond  to  musical  measures.  And  even  if  these  inequalities  of 

70 


SIGNIFICANCE    OF   RESULTS   FOR    METRICAL    THEORY          71 

the  feet  are  overlooked  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  measures  in  music 
itself  are  not  rigidly  equal,  the  analogy  still  falls  for  want  of  any 

/  definite  element  bearing  definite  relations  to  other  elements  within    fb/u 

V  the  measure.  There  ^is  no  syllable  in  verse  which  takes  the  place  of 
the  standard  half  or  quarter  note  in  music.  On  the  contrary  every 
syllable  has  its  own  peculiar  time  value,  and  it  very  frequently 
occurs  that  syllables  which  would  be  short  in  the  musical  plan  of  the 
line  according  to  such  a  scansion  as  Lanier's  are  really  longer  than 
the  theoretically  long  syllables. 

Even  in  the  nonsense  syllables  every  reader  must  be  allowed  to 
have  a  verse  music  of  his  own  for  not  only  do  different  readers  have 
different  tempos  (which  might  happen  even  in  music  were  the  latter 
\not  highly  conventionalized)  but  each  one  has  his  own  privatej^atio^ 
between  long_and  short  sounds.  There  is  nothing  left  of  the  musical 
analogy  if  it  must  be  interpreted  so  freely  as  to  cover  all  these 
anomalies. 

So  much  then  for  the  two  metrical  theories  which  make  time  the 
essential  factor  in  versification.     Such  relations  of  duration  as  they 
posit  are  not  found  in  actual  verse\  The  evidence  is  positive  that  the  1 
regularity  of  verse  does  not  lie  in  its  time 'structure.  \Nevertheless 
what  has  been  said  of  the  remarkable  self-consistency  of  the  com- 
plicated verse  patterns  must  not  be  lost  sight  of.     Time  must  be~l 
more  than  an  incidental  feature  in  rhythm  or  the  repetitions  of  a  I 
verse  would  differ  more  from  one  another  in  time  relations.     True 
as  it  is  that  the  elements  of  the  verse  do  not  arrange  themselves 
regularly  in  time  yet  their  arrangement  is  invariable,  and  that  in- 
variability of  the  time  structure  of  the  rhythm  points  to  the  funda- 
mental function  of  time  in  the  verse  rhythm.     This  argument  must, 
however,  take  into  account  the  fact  that  the  same  verse  may  have 
a  different  rhythmic  pattern  for  different  persons. 

/L  With  the  conventional  English  scansion  by  number  we  have  noth- 
ing  directly  to  do ;  it  must  ultimately  break  down  under  the  logic 
of  its  own  claim  that  nothing  is  right  rhythmically  but  what  has  the 
right  number  of  syllables.  To  say  that  is  to  say  that  some  of  oui*^ 
best  poetry  is  not  good  verse.  We  know  that  the  better  the  poetry 
in  many  cases  the  better  the  rhythm  of  its  verse  sounds  despite  its 
irregularity. \  Lack  of  numerical  regularity  does  not  destroy  the 
rhythm  and  the  latter  can  not  be  grounded  on  numerical  regularity 
alone. 

£j  Of  the  three  remaining  theories  one  calls  for  a  constant  number 
of  accents  arranged  without  system  in  a  line;  another  for  an  in- 
definite number  of  centers  of  stress.  The  result  is  in  either  case  to 
shift  the  rhythmic  unit  from  the  verse  foot  to  the  verse  itself.  That 


r. 


72  TIME    IN    ENGLISH    VERSE    RHYTHM 

there  is  a  rhythm  in  which  the  verses  are  units  can  not  be  denied. 
Its  function  in  poetry  is  of  fundamental  importance.  But  the 
recognition  of  this  larger  rhythm  ought  not  to  obscure  the  existence 
of  rhythm  within  the  verse.  Neither  of  these  conceptions  of  verse 
make  any  provision  whatever  for  verse  rhythm  proper— for  that 
rhythm  which  we  call  2-syllable  or  3-syllable,  rising  or  falling. 

The  sixth  and  last  theory  of  versification  attempts  to  return  to  a 
conception  of  regularity  and  supplement  the  inadequacy  of  the  two 
last  mentioned  by  reintroducing  the  factor  of  time.*    The  conditions 
of  the  present  set  of  experiments  do  not_allow  of  a  critical  discussion 
of  this  point  because  as  has  been  explained  the  joint  of  greatest^ 
stress  could  not  be  recorded.     There   are,   however,   certain  cases 
where  it  Is^evidenTthat  the  interval  between  accents  must  be  far 
from  equal.     No  matter  how  much  leeway  is  given  to  the  accent* 
within  the  stressed  syllable  of  such  verses  as  those  in  Table  XXII., 
it  is  not  possible  to  find  an  arrangement  which  will  leave  equal 
intervals  between  them.     Such  cases  are,  however,  rare~and~"there  is  ^ 
some  reason  to  believe  that  if  the  true  points  of  emphasis  could  be  / 
determined  the  intervals  between  them  would  be  found  considerably/ 
more  regular  than  the  conventional  feet. 

\  The  empirical  facts  leave  no  room  for  a  theory  of  verse  rhythm 
based  merely  on  time.  \  Nor  will  a  close  study  of  the  analyzed  verses 
confirm  one  in  a  prejudice  for  any  of  the  formal  systems  of  versi- 
fication. Here  and  there  there  are  points  in  favor  of  one  or  another, 
but  none  of  them  are  b^rn  out  in  detail.  The  conclusion  must  be 
that  a  theory  of  versification  which  will  cover  the  facts  has  to  begin 
anew— taking  into  account  all  the  factors,  time,  accent,  and  tone,  1 
which  can  possibly  support  the  rhythmic  structure. 

Our  facts  mean  simply  that  time  alone  will  not  support  the 
rhythm.  There  is  no  reason,  however,  to  suppose  that  any  of  the 
other  factors  alone  can  support  it.  It  is  a  small  step  in  advance  to 
show  the  inadequacy  of  partial  theories;  the  more  important  task 
remains  to  find  a  substitute  in  the  complex  which  shall  take  the  place 
of  the  temporal  regularity  which,  it  has  been  so  generally  supposed, 
gave  it  unity  and  system. 

In  any  case  the  starting  point  must  be  the  rhythm  which  is 
actually  found  in  verse.  It  will  not  do  to  suppose  with  Meumann 
that  the  enriching  of  verse  by  its  content  destroys  the  simple 
rhythm  properly  existing  there  and  substitutes  for  it  another — that 
of  the  intellect.  Such  a  substitution  is  preposterous  on  the  face  of  it. 
All  verse  rhythm  is  felt  to  be  rhythmical— if  it  is  verse  at  all— and 
the  most  beautiful  poetic  composition  no  less  so  than  the  most  non- 
sensical nursery  rime.  But  if  the  former  rests  on  an  intellectual 


SIGNIFICANCE    OF    RESULTS    FOR    METRICAL    THEORY  73 

or  emotional  rhythm  and  the  latter  on  one  of  sound  how  do  we  get 
from  one  to  the  other?  Where  is  the  stage  when  a  simple  long  or 
loud  noise  is  replaced  by  a  concept  of  the  same  weight?  Such  a 
substitution  will  not  bear  a  moment 's  consideration.  Moreover,  how 
does  it  happen  that  the  sounds  themselves  even  to  the  most  practised 
ear  still  sound  as  rhythmical  as  ever  in  the  poem  after  they  have 
lost  that  pristine  regularity  which  once  made  of  them  a  rhythm? 
Worse  yet,  why  is  it  that  we  take  great  delight  in  repeating  the 
words  of  a  poem  in  the  metrical  form  even  when  we  pay  no  attention 
to  the  meaning  of  the  verse?  And  lastly,  why  do  poems  lacking  in 
regularity  sound  rhythmical  to  us  when  recited  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage? The  truth  is  that  some  verse  is  rhythmical  even  in  cases 
when  it  is  extremely  irregular.  Other  verse  is  regular  in  some 
respects ;  and  no  more  nor  no  less  rhythmical.  Other  speech  is  fairly 
regular  but  possessed  of  only  poor  rhythm.  Other  speech  is  prose 
and  neither  regular  nor  appreciably  rhythmical.  . 

The  common  man  has  no  difficulty  in  deciding  for  himself  "what 
is  verse  and  what  is  prose-*- what  rhythmical  and  what  not.  It  may 
depend  as  Wallin  has  shown  upon  how  he  reads  it;  under  some 
conditions  it  may  look  like  prose,  when  printed  differently,  like 
poetry,  and  his  reading  will  differ  accordingly,  but  his  judgment 
will  in  either  case  be  correct.  When  he  reads  rhythmically  he  is 
correct  in  calling  it  verse,  and  if  he  reads  prosily  he  will  call  it 
prose  correctly.  It  does  not  matter  under  what  suggestion  he  labors 
or  what  impels  him  to  read  one  way  or  the  other.  ) 

There  is,  of  course,  a  point  of  indifference.  There  are  things  that 
read  so  much  like  prose  and  so  much  like  verse  that  no  reader  can 
decide.  Such  cases  do  not,  however,  affect  the  argument.  No  one 
has  a  right  to  set  up  a  standard  which  fails  to  meet  the  conditions 
of  experience.  Nor  will  it  do  to  deny  the  existence  of  an  experience 
which  is  felt.  [  When  verse  is  read  and  it  feels  and  sounds  rhyth- 
mical then  it  is  so,  and  its  deficiencies  in  the  light  of  some  theory  or 
other  can  not  change  the  fact.l  So  long  as  the  psychological  fact  of 
rhythm  retains  its  integrity  it  is  a  matter  of  small  weight  to  the 
poet  and  lover  of  poetry  whether  its  conditions  are  analyzable  out 
of  the  objective  sound  series  or  whether  it  is  the  product  of  the 
reader's  own  activity  as  he  casts  the  words  of  the  language  into  a 
form  which  suits  better  his  own  disposition  for  temporal  regularity 
and  accentual  symmetry.  But  for  the  psychologist  it  is  worth  while 
to  know  to  what  extent  sequences  of  sounds  may  be  objectively 
irregular  and  still  acquire  the  rhythmic  form. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

SIGNIFICANCE  OF  RESULTS  FOR  THEORY  OF  RHYTHM 

THE  fact  that  music  is  divided  into  measures  of  theoretically 
equal  time  value,  the  fact  that  we  "beat  time"  at  a  fairly  regular 
rate  and  that  we  frequently  resort  to  rhythmical  grouping  of  sounds 
in  our  estimation  of  time— all  these  facts  and  many  others  have  lent 
color  to  the  popular  notion  that  the  two  phenomena,  time  and 
rhythm,  are  inseparately  connected.  It  seems  to  be  true  that  rhythm 
is 'only  found  in  a  time  series— it  is  a  phenomenon  of  succession  or 
even  let  us  say  recurrence— but  this  is  only  saying  that  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  spatial  arrangement.1 

Rhythm  is  a  temporal  phenomenon;  but  if  active,  performed, 
rhythms  are  considered  it  is  not  obvious  that  time  estimation  or  a 
perception  of  time  enters.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  there 
should  be  regularity  in  time.  Such  rhythms  as  the  heart  beat,  walk- 
ing, tapping,  are,  however,  regular.  Breathing  is  less  so.  The  reci- 
tation of  nonsense  syllables  in  tetrameter  lines  is  regular  as  respects 
the  recurrence  of  beats,  the  length  of  the  feet  and  the  length  of  the 
line.  The  recitation  of  simple  verses  of  poetry  shows  no  such  regu- 
larity. A  theory  of  rhythm  based  on  organic  functional  rhythms2 
or  central  nervous  rhythms  could  account  for  the  regularity  of  cer- 
tain performed  rhythms  but  there  are  insurmountable  objections  to 
such  theories.3  Explanations  of  rhythmic  perception  based  on 
strain  of  attention  or  upon  expectation  and  satisfaction  tell  us 
nothing  of  the  rhythms  which  we  make  as  contrasted  with  those  we 
get.  Miner's  description  of  rhythm  in  terms  of  concomitant 
kinaBsthetic  feelings  also  fails  to  take  account  of  that  kind  of  rhythm 
where  the  strain  and  relaxation  are  original  and  no  concomitant 
feeling  is  called  for.  Meyer4  recognizes  the  fact  that  the  direct 
way  to  attack  this  subject  is  from  the  side  of  the  reciter  or  dancer, 

1  There  is  a  certain  spatial  unity  required  also,  it  is  true,  before  we  have 
rhythm;  namely,  the  rhythm  must  all  originate  in  about  the  same  place.  We 
can  not  form  a  rhythmic  series  one  member  of  which  is  made  by  the  voice  and 
another  by  the  finger;  the  rhythm  of  a  clock  tick  is  disturbed  by  rapid  trans- 
position of  the  whole  clock;  a  pendulum  swing  fails  of  its  rhythm  if  its  own 
motion  is  combined  regularly  with  a  motion  of  translation. 

2Hallock,  Pop.  Science  Monthly,  63,  425,  1903. 

3  Miner,  "  Motor  Visual  and  Applied  Rhythms,"  p.  6. 

4  Meyer,  Die  neueren  Sprache,  6,  1899. 

74 


SIGNIFICANCE    OF   RESULTS    FOR    THEORY    OF   RHYTHM        75 

not  that  of  the  hearer  or  onlooker.  Stetson5  also  recognizes  the  prob- 
able function  of  direct  feelings  of  tension  between  opposed  muscle 
sets  as  the  unifying  principle  in  the  rhythm  group. 

If  we  take  the  ground  that  the  grouping  in  rhythm  is  an  affective 
experience  and  if  we  place  it  simply  in  the  dimension  of  strain  and 
relaxation  it  becomes  at  once  clear  why  no  regular  time  relations  are 
necessary.  The  regularity  becomes  a  matter  of  recurrence  of  strain 
at  the  end  of  a  definite  cycle.  The  muscles  may  take  a  longer  or 
shorter  time  to  accomplish  their  cycle  and  the  strain  may  not  come 
at  equal  intervals  of  time  but  the  swing  is  there  and  from  one  place 
to  the  next  like  place  is  one  definite  mental  state  held  together  by 
the  continuous  circular  process. 

Longer  cycles  may  be  made  up  of  a  number  of  smaller  ones  and 
as  the  possible  length  of  any  given  cycle  is  undoubtedly  controlled 
within  certain  physiological  limits,  it  is  clear  that  the  time  occupied 
by  any  five  of  them,  say,  will  be  fairly  constant  even  though  the 
separate  cycles  vary  considerably  in  duration.  The  more  complex 
the  movement  that  must  be  performed  in  a  cycle  of  any  particular 
form  the  more  the  duration  of  such  cycles  will  vary.  The  move- 
ments of  speech  are  extremely  complex  and  the  results  show  as  we 
should  expect  a  very  large  difference  in  the  amounts  of  time  occupied 
by  them.  The  inequality  is  still  further  augmented  by  the  mental 
weighting  of  the  syllables  with  greater  or  less  meaning  according  to 
their  logical  and  grammatical  importance.  Such  weighting  seems 
to  increase  the  strain  attaching  to  the  larger  or  heavier  points  of  the 
cycle  and  at  the  same  time  complicates  the  total  situation  in  such  a 
way  as  to  lengthen  the  time  occupied  by  that  cycle  in  which  it  occurs. 
The  movements  of  singing  or  tapping  on  the  other  hand  are  com- 
paratively very  simple.  In  singing  the  single  tone  is  held  for  the 
prescribed  time  and  there  is  none  of  that  shifting  stress  by  which 
speech  is  enriched  at  the  expense  of  euphony.  Moreover  the  stress 
or  strain  in  music  is  slight  compared  to  that  in  verse,  the  rhythm 
being  comparatively  unmarked.  In  fact,  it  is  often  difficult  for  the  } 
untrained  ear  to  discover  the  rhythmic  beats  in  very  good  music./ 
Tapping  is  evidently  a  succession  of  very  similar  movements  and 
that  they  should  take  place  regularly  as  regards  time  is  not  sur- 
prising. And  what  is  here  said  of  tapping  applies  largely  to  the 
performance  on  musical  instruments  where  the  actual  movements 
gone  through  with  are  not  very  different  as  regards  their  com- 
plexity. There  is  nothing,  therefore,  in  the  temporal  regularity  of 
i  ^simpler]  rhythmic  processes  which  contradicts  the  assumption  of  a 
I  non-temporal  theory  of  rhythm.  And  the  lack  of  temporal  regu- 
larity in  verse  makes  such  an  assumption  imperative. 

5  Psychological  Review  Hon.  SuppL,  Vol.  IV. 


76  TIME   IN    ENGLISH    VERSE   RHYTHM 

Nevertheless  the  psychologist  can  not  afford  to  ignore  all  the  good 
introspection  which  has  reported  temporal  regularity  in  verse  itself. 
The  facts  give  the  lie  to  the  introspection,  but  we  are  bound  to  dis- 
cover the  source  of  the  latter.  If  there  is  an  illusion  of  temporal 
regularity  its  cause  ought  to  be  known.  Some  other  kind  of  regu- 
larity in  the  verse  might  give  rise  to  the  illusion.  That  there  is  some 
kind  of  regularity  can  not  be  doubted  after  considering  the  fact  that 
intricate  verse  rhythms  can  be  repeated  indefinitely  in  almost  iden- 
tical form.  Other  motor  performances  can  not  be  so  accurately  re- 
produced and  the  words  themselves  which  are  employed  are  not  of 
unvariable  duration.6  The  rhythm  itself  is  undoubtedly  responsible 
for  this  fixity  or  stability  of  the  verses.  But  not  a  time  rhythm. 
If  the  feeling  of  rhythm  arises  out  of  a  series  of  motor  performances 
of  alternate  vigor  and  relaxation  the  illusion  of  equality  in  time 
would  very  naturally  arise  from  the  apparent  equivalence  of  these 
series.  Objectively  they  could  differ  in  time  very  considerably  and 
still  be  felt  as  equal  on  account  of  the  real  equality,  not  of  time,  but 
of  kind,  between  the  elements. 

Two  experiences  may  be  physiologically  equal  so  as  to  accomplish 
the  same  result  without  occupying  the  same  time.  But  as  experi- 
ences and  transpiring  in  time  there  will  be  a  tendency  to  attribute 
equal  duration  to  them.  That  an  equality  of  duration  in  some  sense 
is  generally  attributed  to  the  elements  of  a  rhythm  is  common 
knowledge.  Now  we  know  that,  in  the  case  of  verse  rhythm  at  least, 
the  equality  is  not  there.  Is  it  not  natural  then,  to  conclude  that 
!  time  equality  is  an  inference  derived  from  the  apparent  equality  of 
two  impressions  or  expressions  and  confirmed  by  actual  equalities  in 
many  rhythms,  but  not  really  a  constitutive  factor  in  the  rhythm  at 
all?  After  all,  time  is  a  very  uncertain  thing  in  our  experience. 
Experience  itself  often  does  not  measu/e  up  with  the  markings  on 
the  clock's  dial.  >  One  hour  is  long,  another  short,  one  second  only 
half  as  long  to  us  as  the  next.  In  the  end  it  will  be  much  simpler 
to  talk  of  a  rhythm  which  is  actually  present,  perceived  or  per- 
formed, together  with  and  inseparable  from  its  peculiar  feelings,  the 
beats  of  which  are  not  fixed  in  time,  while  its  effect  upon  us  is  that 
of  a  series  of  equal  time  intervals. 

Time  not  only  fails  to  account  for  the  regularity  of  verse  rhythm ; 
it  also  fails  to  offer  a  base  of  distinction  between  the  different  types 
of  rhythm.  Temporally  anapaests  are  just  like  dactyls  and  neither 
clearly  distinguished  from  iambs.  Here  the  concept  of  number 
comes  to  the  rescue  only  to  be  followed  by  unwelcome  consequences, 
and  the  most  satisfactory  course  is  to  fall  back  upon  the  swing  of 

6  Compare,  for  instance,  the  lengths  of  the  familiar  words  "  the  "  or  "  and  " 
in  different  verses. 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF   RESULTS    FOR    THEORY    OF   RHYTHM         77 

the  rhythm  itself.  The  different  rhythms  form  distinct  kinds  of 
cycles.  It  is  the  perseverance  of  one  of  these  types  throughout  a 
verse  or  stanza  that  establishes  the  rhythm.  Each  beat,  or  each 
swing,  brings  up  another  of  the  same  general  structure  and  the  same 
total  affective  value.  Their  form  depends  in  part  upon  the  number 
and  character  of  the  syllables,  but  it  also  depends  very  largely  upon 
the  disposition  of  the  individual.  When  one  starts  to  read  dactylic 
verse  he  finds  dactyls  provided  the  syllables  can  possibly  fit  that 
rhythm.  He  speaks  so  as  to  make  the  segments  of  equal  weight. 
The  rise  and  fall  of  his  effort  is  regular  and  of  the  peculiar  form  of 
that  rhythm.  The  regularity  of  the  motor  performance  and  the 
equivalence  of  the  resulting  feelings  leads  naturally  to  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  impression  of  temporal  regularity ;  but  that  impression  is 
really  subsequent  to  the  rhythm  itself. 


VITA 

The  author  was  born  near  Greensboro,  Georgia,  February  9, 
1882 ;  matriculated  in  the  University  of  California  1900 ;  A.B.,  with 
special  mention,  1904;  M.A.,  1905;  Assistant  in  the  Psychological 
Laboratory,  1904-6.  Assistant  in  Philosophy,  Columbia  University, 
1906-7 ;  in  Psychology,  1907-8.  For  inspiration  and  encouragement 
he  is  indebted  to  the  teaching  and  example  of  Professors  Howison 
and  Stratton  of  Berkeley,  and  of  Professors  Cattell,  Woodworth, 
Dewey,  Woodbridge  and  Thorndike,  of  Columbia. 


79 


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